Anthropogenic contamination

The developed assay was successfully applied for the arsenite and arsenate determination in contaminated waters of the gold recovery plant and in snow covers of the industrial anthropogenic sources vicinities as well. The data produced are in a good agreement with the results of independent methods atomic absorptioin and atomic emission spectrometry and capillary electrophoresis. 

Both contamination and pollution entail the perturbation of the natural state of the environment by anthropogenic activity. The two terms are distinguishable by the severity of the effect pollution induces the loss of potential resources. Additionally, a clear cause-effect relationship must be established for a substance to be classified as a pollutant towards a particular organism. 

Figure 1. Conceptual model illustrating examples of major anthropogenic contaminant sources and contaminants, their distribution within the abiotic environmental media, their movement into biota with potential food chain contamination, and potential effects at the organismal, population, conmiunity and ecosystem level of organization.

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