Subject soil uptake

An environmental protocol has been developed to assess the significance of newly discovered hazardous substances that might enter soil, water, and the food chain. Using established laboratory procedures and C-labeled 2,3,7,8-tetra-chlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), gas chromatography, and mass spectrometry, we determined mobility of TCDD by soil TLC in five soils, rate and amount of plant uptake in oats and soybeans, photodecomposition rate and nature of the products, persistence in two soils at 1,10, and 100 ppm, and metabolism rate in soils. We found that TCDD is immobile in soils, not readily taken up by plants, subject to photodecomposition, persistent in soils, and slowly degraded in soils to polar metabolites. Subsequent studies revealed that the environmental contamination by TCDD is extremely small and not detectable in biological samples. 

York and New England are devoid of fish due to the effects of acid rain. Indirect effects of the low pH values associated with acid rain also affect organisms. As noted in Table 13.1, one of the properties of an acid is the ability to dissolve certain metals. This has a profound effect on soil subjected to acid rain. Acid rain can mobilize metal ions such as aluminum, iron, and manganese in the basin surrounding a lake. This not only depletes the soil of these cations disrupting nutrient uptake in plants, but also introduces toxic metals into the aquatic system. 

Little or no fractionation accompanies the uptake of sulfate in soils by plants during ASR (60.611. Chukhrov et al. ( Q) showed that in cases where atmospheric sulfate is not subject to bacterial reduction in the soil, the value of the plant sulfur was identical to rainfall sulfur. In soils subject to dissimilatory sulfate reduction, the 6 S value of plant sulfur differed from that of local rainfall. Additionally, Chukhrov et al. (60) found that plants from oceanic islands had a sulfur content with higher values than those from continental areas, which they attribute to the relative influence of marine sulfate to these areas. 

Biota t,2 > 50 d, subject to plant uptake from soil via volatilization (Ryan et al. 1988). 

Transport and Transformation of Chemicals A Perspective. - Transport Processes in Air. - Solubility, Partition Coefficients, Volatility, and Evaporation Rates. - Adsorption Processes in Soil. - Sedimentation Processes in the Sea. - Chemical and Photo Oxidatioa - Atmospheric Photochemistry. -Photochemistry at Surfaces and Interphases. -Microbial Metabolism. - Plant Uptake, Transport and Metabolism. - Metabolism and Distribution by Aquatic Animals. - Laboratory Microecosystems. - Reaction Types in the Environment. -Subject Index. 

Soil t,/j < 10 d, via volatilization subject to plant uptake from the soil (Ryan et al. 1988) t,/j = 0.0106-0.106 h, based on estimated hydrolysis half-life in water (Howard et al. 1991). 

Since all of the tritium in the crops was in the form of tritiated water, it seems reasonable to assume that the uptake into the plants derives from the aqueous fraction in the soil. The bulk of the tritium in the rooting zone in the soil was however still in the form of OBT. The uptake into the crop would therefore appear to come from a mobile pool of tritiated water. This pool would be subject to losses via transfer into the plant, downward leaching out of the rooting zone and transpiration into the atmosphere as water vapour. 

Specific adsorption on well defined materials has been the subject of many reviews [8-13]. Specific adsorption plays a key role in transport of nutrients and contaminants in the natural environment, and many studies with natural, complex, and ill defined materials have been carried out. Specific adsorption of ions by soils and other materials was reviewed by Barrow [14,15]. The components of complex mineral assemblies can differ in specific surface area and in affinity to certain solutes by many orders of magnitude. For example, in soils and rocks, (hydr)oxides of Fe(IH) and Mn(IV) are the main scavengers of metal cations and certain anions, even when their concentration expressed as mass fraction is very low. Traces of Ti02 present as impurities are responsible for the enhanced uptake of U by some natural kaolinites. In general, complex materials whose chemical composition seems very similar can substantially differ in their sorption properties due to different nature and concentration of impurities , which are dispersed in a relatively inert matrix, and which play a crucial role in the sorption process. In this respect the significance of parameters characterizing overall sorption properties of complex materials is limited. On the other hand the assessment of the contributions of particular components of a complex material to the overall sorption properties would be very tedious. 

---