Environmental forensics and chemical fingerprinting involve identifying the type of contamination, tracing it back to its source, and occasionally fingerprinting to identify a specific source. It is useful in both remediation and litigation.

Environmental forensics and chemical finger printing involves identifying the type of contamination, tracing it back to its source, and occasionally fingerprinting to identify a specific source. It is useful in both remediation and litigation. It involves all aspects of site characterization and it requires an accurate conceptual site model. Environmental forensics is the systematic and scientific evaluation of physical, chemical, and historical information for the purpose of developing defensible scientific and legal conclusions regarding the source or age of a contaminant released into the environment. As such, there is a multitude of forensic techniques available for contaminant age dating and source identification including, but not limited to aerial photo interpretation/photogrammetry, chemicals associated with discrete chemical processes, identification of the manufacturer of a particular product, chemical additives and/or impurities, chemical profiling, degradation modeling, corrosion models, contaminant transport modeling, surrogate chemical analysis, chronological changes in chemical processes resulting is diagnostic markers, compound specific isotopic analysis, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congener analysis and degradation product ratio analysis. Given the range of available environmental forensic techniques, selected methods are presented to illustrate the applications of environmental forensics to identify the age and source of a contaminant release.