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Advanced Methodologies for the Determination of the Lability of Trace Metals and Their Application to Contaminated Soils
Start date:2010-09-01
End date:2012-08-31
Project Acronym:MEDEA
Project status:Completed
Coordinator
| Organization name:NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL | |
| Administrative contact | Address |
|
Name:Lynne |
Polaris House, North Star Avenue SWINDON WILTSHIRE UNITED KINGDOM Region: |
| Tel:+44-01159363202 | |
| Fax:+44-01159363370 | |
| E-mail:Contact | |
| URL:http://www.nerc.ac.uk | Organization Type:Research |
Description
Objective:
Much of Western Europe has inherited soil contaminated with heavy metals from past mining, mineral processing and industrial activities. When performing risk assessment for eco-toxicological, human health or ground water vulnerability studies the major issue is not the total concentration of the heavy metal but its labile fraction i.e. the proportion of the metal transferable to an aqueous phase in ionic form. This may vary widely as a function of the solid forms in which the metal is hosted, the pH and red-ox conditions in pore waters that control the liability, or the occurrence of other species within the aqueous phase which may provide competitive sorption or preferential transport modes. Given the toxicity of a number of heavy metals even at low contents, accurate methods are required to properly monitor them in the environment and gain further insight in their behaviour.
Simple extraction schemes are the most common procedure to assess natural availability of heavy metals in different scenarios. However, it has been demonstrated that these are unable to measure the true proportion of metal that may be exchangeable and contribute to liability, which may lead to unreliable risk assessments. This proposal seeks to accurately study the liability of heavy metals in several polluted scenarios by applying one of the most advanced methodologies for this purpose, namely isotope dilution (ID). This technique reflects the pool of reactive metal in the soil and can be used to model solid-solution equilibrium and the fixation of metal ions into less available forms. ID method has been successfully implemented for Cd, Zn and As, while a method for environmentally significant elements such as Fe, Sb and Se -particularly susceptible to red-ox conditions- remains to be developed. Data will be combined with soil pore water analyses to geo-chemically model scenarios and determine the role of changing red-ox conditions in the releases of heavy metals to the environment.
Achievements:
General information:
Project Details
Start date:2010-09-01
End date:2012-08-31
Duration:24 months
Project Reference:254983
Project cost:172740 EURO
Project Funding:172740 EURO
Programme Acronym:
FP7-PEOPLE
Programme type:Seventh Framework Programme
Subprogramme Area:Marie Curie: "Promoting science"
Contract type:Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)
URL:http://www.gold.ac.uk/medea/
Subject index:Scientific Research, Innovation, Technology Transfer, Education, Training
Other participants
Record control number:96918
