Environmental materials, activation analysis

Kucera j (1995) Elemental characterization of new Polish and US NIST geological, environmental and biological reference materials by neutron activation analysis and comments on the methodology of interlaboratory comparisons. Chem Anal (Warsaw) 40 405-421. 

Kucera J, and Soukal L (1998) Low uncertainty determination of manganese and vanadium in environmental and biological reference materials by instrumental neutron activation analysis. Fresenius J Anal Chem 360 415-418. 

Nadkami, R.A. and W.D. Ehmann. 1970. Trace element determination in biological materials by neutron activation analysis. Pages 407-419 in D.D. Hemphill (ed.). Trace Substances in Environmental Health IV. Univ. Missouri, Columbia. 

Detection techniques of high sensitivity, selectivity, and ease of coupling with sample preparation procedures are of special interest for measuring PGM content in biological and environmental samples. ICP MS, electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ET AAS), adsorptive voltammetry (AV), and neutron activation analysis (NAA) have fotmd the widest applications, both for direct determination of the total metal content in the examined samples and for coupling with instrumental separation techniques. Mass spectrometry coupled with techniques such as electrospray ionization (ESI) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) (e.g., ESI MS", LC ESI MS", LC ICP MS, CE MS", and CE ICP MS) offer powerful potential for speciation analysis of metals. MS is widely used for examination of the distribution of the metals in various materials (elemental analysis) and for elucidation of the... 

Suzuki S, Hirai S. 1987. Instrumental neutron activation analysis of vehicle exhaust particulates as environmental reference material. Anal Sci 3 193-197. 

Oughton DH and Day JP (1993) Determination of caesium, rubidium and scandium in biolo cal and environmental materials by neutron activation analysis. Chemistry Articles 174 177—185. 

Despite the absence of any known biological roles for strontium, analysis of trace amounts of the alkali earth metal in many environmental and industrial samples and, especially, in radioactive waste is of critical importance. Techniques applicable for analyzing strontium in environmental or biological material are atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), direct-current plasma echelle spectrometry, neutron activation analysis and X-ray fluorescence. For most applications, the first two mentioned methods are of interest because, in general, they allow... 

Classical methods for analysis of manganese have been the periodate method in air, and the permanganate method in water (Saric 1986). Nowadays, among the solid-state analytical methods available, neutron activation analysis (NAA) is the most reliable to determine manganese in biological and environmental materials. This method of choice combines both high specificity, sensitivity and reproducibility for very low concentrations of manganese, whereas X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy showed standardization problems and arc/ spark emission spectroscopy suffered from electrode contamination (Chiswell and Johnson 1994). 

The uranium content of a sample can be determined by fluorometry, alpha-spectrometry, neutron activation analysis (NAA), (IAEA 2000), or inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) (Baglan etal. 1999). For uranium, isotope analysis may be carried out using ICP-MS (Uchida etal., 2000). In most cases, measurements of environmental levels or biological materials require preliminary sample preparations such as ashing and dissolution in acid, followed by either solvent extraction or ion exchange (PUvio and... 

Some examples of applications of nuclear activation analytical techniques to elemental determinations in a variety of materials are presented in Table 2.10. The specific contents of some of these and other publications may be briefly highlighted. Cunningham and Stroube Jr. (1987) provide a nice coverage of the application of an instrumental neutron activation analysis procedure to analysis of food, describing the capabilities of INAA for the multielement analysis of foods as carried out for many years, and also currently, by analysts of the US Food and Drug Administration stationed at the NIST Nuclear reactor facility. Salbu and Steinnes (1992) touch upon applications of nuclear analytical techniques in environmental research, and Norman and Iyengar... 

Filby, R.H., Davis, A.I., Shah, K.R. and Haller, W.A. (1970) Determination of mercury in biological and environmental materials by instrumental neutron activation analysis. Microchim. Acta, 1970, 1130-1136. 

Alian, A., Djingova, R Kroener, B, Sansoni, B 1984. The monostandard method in thermal neutron activation analysis of geological, biological and environmental materials. Fresenius Z. Anal. Chem. 319, 47-53. Alian, A., Djingova. R., Sansoni, B., 1985. Comparison of different neutron activation analysis methods for multielement analysis of geological materials. In Sansoni, B. (Ed.), Instrumentelle Multielementanalyse. VCH Publishers, Weinheim, pp. 123-132. 

Choice of SATs. What elements should one choose as stable activ-able tracers Probably no universal tracer suitable for all applications exists, but certain general criteria can be stated for the choice of suitable SATs. These criteria include a good detection sensitivity (which for neutron activation analysis translates into a high neutron capture cross section and/or a short half-life for the activation product) a reasonable cost (as measured by the sum of analysis and tracer cost) a low natural concentration the fact that it is nonhazardous at environmentally useful concentrations and an equivalence in behavior to the material being traced. 

The Choice of Tracer and Its Chemical Form. As stated previously, the tracer should be easy to detect, inexpensive, nontoxic at environmentally useful concentrations, have low environmental abundance, and, most important, exhibit similar behavior to the material being traced. Among the elements used for their ease of detection (in the absence of other elements) by neutron activation analysis are Sc, V, Mn, Cu, As, Br, Y, Pd, In, Sb, I, the rare earths, Ta, W, Re, Ir, Au, and U. In particular matrix, some of these may become much more di Scult to detect. For example, in marine samples, the high levels of 15-h Na produced by activation may necessitate pre- (or post-) irradiation removal of the Na or use of trace elements with long half-lives (t > 5 days). 

Well over 10,000 papers dealing with activation analysis have appeared in the literature. Most of these (99%) have been published since 1955. Some of the more interesting applications have been determining potentially toxic trace elements in natural waters and environmental samples, authenticating paintings and other objects of art, and studying impurities in semiconductor materials, trace elements in plant and animal metabolism, and trace-element abundances in terrestrial rocks, meteorites, and lunar samples. In the analyses of lunar samples, more than twice as many trace-element determinations have been reported by activation analysis than by any other technique. In fact, the activation-analysis determinations on these rare samples probably exceed those by all other techniques combined. 

Hou, X., Chai, C. Qian, Q. (1997). Determination Of Bromine And Iodine In Biological And Environmental Materials Using Epithermal Neutron Activation Analysis. Fresenius Anal Chem, Vol.357, pp 1106-1110, ISSN 1432-1130... 

Photon activation analysis has primarily been applied in the areas of geo-and cosmochemistry, oceanography, environmental science, industrial raw- and end-product analysis, high-purity material studies, organic material/medical and biological material analysis, forensic science, art and archaeology, certification of candidate reference materials. 

A prominent feature of nuclear analytical methods is the capability of simultaneous multielement analysis. Activation of a sample will induce activity in many elements contained in the sample. Optimized irradiation and counting cycles involving a combination of various NAA procedures applied to a sample of coal have produced results for more than 50 elements (Germani et al. 1980). The analysis of 20-25 elements in biological and environmental materials can be regarded as routine for INAA (Becker et al. 1994). 

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is useful to measure extremely low-abundance nuclides (isotope ratio of 10 to 10 relative to its stable isotope), such as Be, C, A1, C1, " Ca, and I, in natural samples. Small amounts of C and T can be measured by AMS on mg size samples of carbon and iodine extracted from 500-ml seawater samples (Povinec et al. 2000). Neutron activation analysis (NAA), radiochemical neutron activation analysis (RNAA), and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) are useful for the determination of ultra-trace Th and U in geological and cosmochemical samples, and for determination of the concentration of Pu and Pu. Reference marine-biological samples are necessary to test the performance of the analytical methods employed in surveying and monitoring radioactive materials in the sea. An ocean shellfish composite material containing 0.1% w/w Irish Sea mussel, 12% w/w White Sea mussel, and 87.9% w/w Japan Sea oyster has been prepared as the NIST SRM 4358 (The National Institute of Standards and Technology, SRM) in the natural-matrix, environmental-level radioactive SRM series (Altzitzoglou 2000). This NIST SRM 4358 sample will be useful for the determination of the activity of K, Cs, Pb, Ra, Th, and Am. 

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