Failure to adequately define [sample] support has long been a source of confusion in site characterization and remediation because risk due to long-term exposure may involve areal supports of hundreds or thousands of square meters; removal by backhoe or front-end loader may involve minimum remediation units of 5 or 10 m2; and sample measurements may be taken on soil cores only a few centimeters in diameter. (Englund and Heravi, 1994) The importance of this observation cannot be overstated.
