Factor Analysis (FA) is applied to tentatively establish either jhe sources of pollution in the groundwater in a delimited zone in Catalonia which has been polluted by permeation with non-controlled wastewaters or the groundwater evolution with time in this area. Three types of chemical analysis were considered: general parameters indicating the chemical quality of water, inorganic micropollutants and organic micropollutants. These analyses were carried out with forty-five samples collected in three different periods, and eleven parameters were considered. From the final solutions of the FA method applied several factors were retained for the different sampling periods and these factors were related to different sources of pollution. FA has proved to be more useful when punctual pollution incidents takes place rather than when groundwater evolution with time is studied.
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