The term 'total petroleum hydrocarbons' (TPHs) is used for any mixture of several hundred hydrocarbons found in crude oil, and they represent the sum of volatile petroleum hydrocarbons and extractable petroleum hydrocarbons. The petrol-range organics include hydrocarbons from C6 to C10, while diesel-range organics are C10-C28 hydrocarbons. Environmental pollution by petroleum hydrocarbons is one of the major global concerns, particularly in oil-yielding countries. In fact, there are more than five million potentially contaminated areas worldwide that represent, in general, a lost economic opportunity and a threat to the health and well-being of humans and the environment. Petroleum-contaminated sites constitute almost one-third of the total sites polluted with chemicals around the globe. The land contamination caused by industrialization was recognized as early as the 1960s, but less than a tenth of potentially contaminated lands have been remediated due to the nature of the contamination, cost, technical impracticability, and insufficient land legislation and enforcement. This book is the first single source that provides comprehensive information on the different aspects of TPHs, such as sources and range of products, methods of analysis, fate and bioavailability, ecological implications including impact on human health, potential approaches for bioremediation such as risk-based remediation, and regulatory assessment procedures for TPH-contaminated sites. As such, it is a valuable resource for researchers, graduate students, technicians in the oil industry and remediation practitioners, as well as policy makers.

Dr Saranya Kuppusamy obtained MSc in Agricultural Microbiology (2009-11) from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India. She joined the University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, Australia in 2012 for her doctoral research with the prestigious International Postgraduate Research Scholarship together with the top-up fellowship from the Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment and obtained PhD in Environmental Remediation and Public Health in 2015. Her research findings on 'A new microbial formulation to clean up contaminated sites' have been highlighted in Research Edge Newsletter of the University of South Australia in 2015. Later she joined the Gyeongsang National University, Jinju, South Korea in November 2015 and worked as a Research Professor until June 2018. She received 'Excellent thesis presentation award' offered by the Korean Society of Environmental Agriculture (KSEA) in the International Symposium and Annual Meeting of the KSEA held at Muju, the Republic of Korea in 2016. She has been availing the DST-SERB Ramanujan Fellowship (Scientist D) awarded (2018-23) by the Govt. of India at the Centre for Environmental Studies Anna University, Chennai, India. She has been actively involved in different areas of Agriculture and Environment (Soil chemistry, Fertility and management, Environmental biotechnology, Biochar, Soil and water remediation, Waste management, Crop quality improvement), and published 46 journal articles (over 850 citations, h-index of 16 and i10-index of 23), two book chapters and a book, 'Agricultural and Industrial Microbiology'.
Dr Naga Raju Maddela received MSc (1996-98) and PhD (2012) in Microbiology from Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapuramu, India. During his doctoral program in the area of Environmental Microbiology, he investigated the effects of industrial effluents/insecticides on soil microorganisms and their biological activities. He worked as a faculty in Microbiology for 15 years, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students. He received 'Prometeo Investigator Fellowship' (2013-15) from Secretaría de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación, Ecuador, and 'Postdoctoral Fellowship' (2016-18) from Sun Yat-sen University, China. He received external funding from 'China Postdoctoral