Soil organisms may be useful in identifying
clean-up priorities and monitoring environmental
change because they provide objective metrics that integrate
physical, chemical, and biological parameters.
Thus, they provide a more accurate and feasible measure
of biotoxicity of chemical contaminants, such as
creosote, than measuring comprehensive profiles of
individual chemical concentrations and their degradation
products (Debus and Hund, 1997). Creosote
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-419-530-2585;
fax: +1-419-530-4421.
E-mail address: deborah.neher@utoledo.edu (D.A. Neher).
is a mixture of thousands of chemicals with 85%
as two–five-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
(PAHs).