engleski

Trace elements in the marine environment and multielemental methods for their determination

The aim of the lecture is to give information about the biogeochemical cycling of trace metals in the marine environment as well as about analytical methods capable to determine trace metals in different kinds of marine samples at their natural levels. A general cycling of trace metals in the marine environment will be described, including input of metals to the oceans from the atmosphere and by rivers, processes in the water column leading to the transport of metals into sediments and the biological uptake of metals into marine organisms which may result in bioaccumulation or even biomagnification of metals in the marine food chain. A biogeochemical cycles of some ecotoxic metals as are Hg, Pb and Cd, for which it is established that on the global level the anthropogenic input is higher than the natural one and that the natural biogeochemical cycle is disturbed, will be described in more details. A prerequisite to study trace metals behavior in the marine environment is the existence of enough sensitive and specific analytical methods by which concentration of various metal species and their natural concentration can be measured. Therefore, in the second part of the lecture, description of modern analytical methods which fulfill these requirements will be given. As a separate lecture will be devoted to the electrochemical methods, in this lecture the basic knowledge on the multielemental spectroscopic methods (AAS, ICPAES, ICPMS) will be given and the performances and applicability of these methods for the analysis of trace metals in marine samples will be compared. The whole analytical procedure (sampling and preparation steps, which include decomposition of solid samples) will be briefly presented as well.

Trace metals; marine environment; multielemental methods

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