AbstractThe initial progress of an ongoing laboratory investigation is described in which phenol and aniline were mixed into a slightly organic, loamy soil and various aqueous solutions used to attempt to extract these organic contaminants. Extraction compounds consisted of deionized water, hydrogen peroxide at varying concentration and sodium hydroxide at varying pH. Two methods were used to affect desorption. The first method, which is simple and quick, has been termed the “successive reverse isotherm” (SRI) method, and the second method, which is very labor intensive and time‐consuming, but which represents better the conditions that exist in an in situ extraction operation, was the permeation method. The SRI method indicated that an aqueous solution of hydrogen peroxide in concentration of 200 to 500 mg/L extracted about 45% of the phenol, while an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide at a pH of 10 extracted in excess of 70% of the phenol. On the other hand, none of the solutions extracted more than 25% of the aniline. Further tests conducted in permeameters indicated that approximately 80% of phenol was recovered by permeation with either hydrogen peroxide or sodium hydroxide and that both were measurably more effective than deionized water. Neither the phenol nor any of the decontaminants had any major effect on hydraulic conductivity or physical index properties of the soil. From the results of the tests to date, the SRI test appears to provide a viable method of predicting whether permeameter tests will yield productive re