ISSN:
1618-2650
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Chemistry and Pharmacology
Notes:
Abstract The estimation of the environmental risk of contaminated sites caused by hazardous components may be obtained, for instance, by means of a soil survey. There unavoidable errors by sampling, sample preparation and chemical analysis occur. Furthermore, in case of mercury contaminations, the mercury content detectable by chemical analysis can be falsified, if between sampling, on the one hand, and sample preparation and sample decomposition for chemical analysis, on the other hand, volatile components or elementary metallic mercury escape from the sample. Thus, in these cases, handling of samples such as air drying, storing in plastic bags or thermal evaporation, generally termed sample pretreatment, is a further source of error in evaluating a material. However, the measuring results are influenced not only by sampling, sample pretreatment, sample preparation by homogenization and splitting, and chemical analysis; they must also reflect the intrinsic properties of the soil sample subject to both global fluctuations and local heterogeneities. The present work shows by example of a non-uniformly contaminated site to what extent the analytically detectable mercury content is changed by the method of handling of soil samples in the period between sampling and chemical analysis. A hierarchical experimental design was realized in order to separately quantify the different sources of variation of the measured mercury contents, which are caused by global variations, local heterogeneities, sample preparation, sample pretreatment as well as chemical analysis. As turned out by variance analysis, the variance portion contributed to the total variance by sample pretreatment is highly significant and lies in the same order of magnitude as the variance caused by local heterogeneities of the soil. That means that the type of sample pretreatment influences the analytical results essentially. In order to quantify the effect of a definite pretreatment method in comparison with the mercury content of the unchanged original soil sample, the probable systematic error of a method was introduced. Investigations were only carried out at two sampling locations of the contaminated site because of the relatively high labour; the mean values and variances obtained cannot be immediately transferred to other sites. However, the general knowledge can be used as methodical basis for further investigations. Particularly, the consequence arises that the regulations existing for the treatment of mercury-contaminated samples between sampling and chemical analysis must be revised to obtain comparable criteria of evaluation.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00323340
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