Contamination mappings

In recent years, several initiatives have been launched to establish or strengthen surveillance systems, both in EU member states and at an international level, to monitor the presence of these residues in environmental matrices. When implementing measures, water bodies relevant for drinking water should receive priority. Furthermore, research is required to determine whether observations made from regional sample sets are representative of environmental concentrations nationwide [3], being essential to perform contamination maps and implement surveillance models, needed for the establishment of a sustainable strategy, to minimize environmental impact of medicines. 

Estimation of loaded areas and contamination map-making Application of geostatis-tical methods (see Sections 4.4 and 9.4) for the assessment of the area and the degree of pollution. 

Contamination maps officially published in the three Republics... 

Information from continuing aerial surveys and environmental sampling has been used to derive official surface contamination maps which display the ranges of surface concentration of caesium, strontium and plutonium. Officially published in 1989, the maps have stirred controversy among scientists and residents. About 25,000 km and 2225 settlements in the three Republics are officially defined as having a Cs surface contamination in excess of 185 kBq/m (5 Ci/km ). 

AR196 The international Chernobyl project Surface contamination maps, 17 May 1991. 

The most widely deployed industrial explosion suppressant is mono-ammonium phosphate powder (MAP). This suppressant has a wide range of effectiveness. However, it can prove to be a contaminant, necessitating stringent clean-down procedures after a suppressed explosion incident. This limitation is overcome by selecting a sodium... 

Electromagnetic (EM) Conductivity Measures the electrical conductivity of materials in microohms over a range of depths determined by the spacing and orientation of the transmitter and receiver coils, and the nature of the earth materials. Delineates areas of soil and groundwater contamination and the depth to bedrock or buried objects. Surveys to depths of SO to 100 ft are possible. Power lines, underground cables, transformers and other electrical sources severely distort the measurements. Low resistivities of surficial materials makes interpretation difficult. The top layers act as a shunt to the introduction of energy info lower layers. Capabilities for defining the variation of resistivity with depth are limited. In cases where the desired result is to map a contaminated plume in a sand layer beneath a surficial clayey soil in an area of cultural interference, or where chemicals have been spilled on the surface, or where clay soils are present it is probably not worth the effort to conduct the survey. 

Flazardous waste sites are divided into as many or as few zones as necessary to protect worker health and safety. Work zones are established to prevent the spread of hazardous substances from contaminated to clean areas. Radiological work zones should be considered compatible with hazardous waste work zones, differing only in terminology. Diagrams, sketches, and maps should be used as often as necessary and constantly updated and communicated so that workers can be sure that they are appropriately protected [3]. 

Public access to databases maintained by the US. Environmental Protection Agency. Databases such as Air, Chemicals, Facility Information, Releases, Water Permits, Drinking Water Contaminant Occurrence, Maps, and more. 

TOF-SIMS can be applied to identify a variety of molecular fragments, originating from various molecular surface contaminations. It also can be used to determine metal trace concentrations at the surface. The use of an additional high current sputter ion source allows the fast erosion of the sample. By continuously probing the surface composition at the actual crater bottom by the analytical primary ion beam, multi element depth profiles in well defined surface areas can be determined. TOF-SIMS has become an indispensable analytical technique in modem microelectronics, in particular for elemental and molecular surface mapping and for multielement shallow depth profiling. 

In SAM the electron beam can be focussed to provide a spatial resolution of < 12 nm, and areas as small as a few micrometers square can be scanned, providing compositional information on heterogeneous samples. For example, the energy resolution is sufficient to distinguish the spectrum of elemental silicon from that of silicon in the form of its oxide, so that a contaminated area on a semiconductor device could be identified by overlaying the Auger maps of the two forms of silicon obtained from such a specimen. 

PAHs are widespread environmental contaminants resulting from combustion, discharge of fossil fuels, and automobile exhausts [29]. As they are hydrophobic substances, they are strongly adsorbed to the organic fraction of SEs and soils. A different spatial distribution of PAHs was obtained for each of the three analyzed years. However, the upper course of the Ebro River was the most affected area by this contamination during the whole period of study. In Fig. 10, larger dots represent higher contributions of this PAHs contamination pattern than smaller dots. In the year 2004 (upper map on the left of Fig. 10), samples R0 (the closest to the river source) and T8 (an industrial place located in Navarra) were the most affected sites by PAHs contamination. As a result of its location, R0 was not... 

The distribution of the OCs contamination pattern is presented in the upper map on the right of Fig. 10. These substances were used as pesticides in the past, but their application is banned at present. OCs were specially detected in the lower course of the Ebro River basin. Sample R17 in Flix, Tarragona, was the one presenting a higher contribution of this contamination pattern, since this area has a historically well-known contamination problem caused by OCs produced as subproducts of the local industry. Samples R19 and R20, located downstream of R17 and very close to the Ebro River delta, presented a high OCs contamination as well. 

The APs contamination pattern, which is related to industry and urbanization, was widely distributed over the whole river basin (lower map on the right of Fig. 10). The highest contribution of this contamination was mainly detected close to the big cities such as Zaragoza, Lleida, and Vitoria, among others, where the main sources for this type of contamination (urbanization, industry, and waste-water treatment plants) coexist. 

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