Trace element environmental fate

Page A.L. Fate and effects of trace elements in sewage sludge when applied to agricultural lands. US Environmental Protection Agency Report No. EPA670/2-74-005,1974. 

Hopefully, within the next decade, air pollution toxicology will make significant advances from its current descriptive phase to one of concept development. Descriptive data will always be necessary, but for it to be meaningful, it must be put into perspective. The physical and chemical characterization of trace element emissions and determinations of their environmental fate are prerequisites for meaningful biological testing. Studies on the biological effects of trace element loads in combination as well as individually are needed because of their combined presence in the environment and the complexity of their interactions. 

Llorens, J.F., Fern ndez-Turiel, J.L. and Querol, X. (2001) The fate of trace elements in a large coal-fired power plant. Environmental Geology, 40(4-5), 409-16. 

Apodaca, L.E., Driver, N.E. and Bails, J.B. (2000) Occurrence, transport, and fate of trace elements, blue river basin, Summit County, Colorado an integrated approach. Environmental Geology, 39(8), 901-13. 

Chemical elements that are either present naturally in the soil or introduced by pollution are more usefully estimated in terms of availability of the element, because this property can be related to mobility and uptake by plants. A good estimation of availability can be achieved by measuring the concentration of the element in soil pore water. Recent achievements in analytical techniques allowed to expand the range of interest to trace elements, which play a crucial role both in contaminated and uncontaminated soils and include those defined as potentially toxic elements (PTE) in environmental studies. A complete chemical analysis of soil pore water represents a powerful diagnostic tool for the interpretation of many soil chemical phenomena relating to soil fertility, mineralogy and environmental fate. This chapter describes some of the current methodologies... 

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996 (b) M. A. Champ, P. F. Seligman (Eds.), Organotin Environmental Fate and Effects, Chapman Hall, London, 1996 (c) L. Ebdon (Ed.), Trace Element Speciation for Environment, Food and Health, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 2001. 

Detailed studies performed during the last decades on the fate and levels of trace elements in various human organs, tissues and fluids of exposed and control subjects have become a major task in toxicological, clinical, epidemiological and environmental research. This constituted a major challenge for the development of new analytical methods in this field, as well as for the improvement of existing methods. 

Gough, L. P., and Severson, R. C. (1995). Mine-land reclamation the fate of trace elements in arid and semi-arid areas. In Environmental Aspects of Trace Elements in Coal, ed. D. J. Swaine and F. Goodarzi, pp. 275-307. Dordrecht Kluwer. 

Inorganic geochemistry will continue to play a central role in palaeolimnology. No techniques will replace chemical characterization of mineral matter as a basic indicator of catchment sources. As in the past, procedures will evolve, and interpretation will improve with the growing numbers of studies. With current interest in the environmental fate of pollutant trace elements in catchments, there has never been greater potential for chemical palaeolimnology to make a major contribution. 

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