R. E. Jervis

Scalp hair as a monitor of population exposure to environmental pollutants

Concentrations of As, Cd, Hg, Pb, Sb and Zn have been measured in hair from population groups with varied types of environmental exposure. Rural and urban controls have exhibited low levels of most toxic elements, whereas people residing near urban lead refineries, rural gold refinery and other industries have shown high elemental concentrations in their hair. A combination of instrumental as well as radiochemical neutron and photon activation analysis methods have been used to determine the concentrations of the above elements. The precision and accuracy of these methods have been evaluated.

Trace impurities in Canadian oil-sands, coals and petroleum products and their fate during extraction, up-grading and combustion

National energy programs for the next two decades entail increased total consumption of fossil fuels in general and, in particular of portable fuels extracted from oil sands and shales and from lower quality coals. Improved fuel-upgrading and combustion technologies are recognized to be vital for minimizing environmental degradation caused by continental and global acid-rain precipitation from fossil-fuel impurities. A further consideration, however, is the fate of those trace-element co-contaminants of acid-rain such as heavy metals, which are present at lower concentrations (10−4–10−7) but may also be of environmental significance when 107 to 109 tons·y−1 are utilized on several continents. In this laboratory, INAA procedures have been adapted for the determination of 25–30 trace impurities in a variety of fuels and extracts including: S, V and Al, As, Ba, Br, Ca, Ce, Cl, Co, Cr, Dy, Eu, Fe, Hf, K, La, Mn, Na, Rb, Sb, Sc, Sm, Th, Ti, U. Samples were obtained of typical Canadian pumped crudes, and from several Canadian oil-sands and coal deposits (mostly bituminous and subbituminous) both in their natural states and after stages of extraction and upgrading. Also analyzed were fuels derived from them and the residues resulting from their refining and combustion. InAA of all fossil fuel extracts including light oils, viscous bitumen and such organic fluids could be performed under the same conditions as the parent substances: crude oils, oil-sands and coals, without any special sample preparation. Although no standard samples are routinely required because of the 1–2% long-term flux stability of the reactor, accuracy checks were performed periodically by reference to NBS-1632A standard coal and atomic absorption standard dilute solutions. Results obtained for the NBS coal SRM and the BAM flyash sample (1978) are also given. A wide range of trace impurities determined in the Canadian fossil fuels included some of those which are of particular significance in Canadian coals and their ashes (a STM standard ashing method). The ‘inorganic’ traces can also be grouped according to their fate during static combustion at 750°C.

Biomedical and health studies with the new Canadian SLOWPOKE reactor

Several features of the new SLOWPOKE+ pool-type nuclear reactor have made it very useful for instrumental neutron activation of tissues, blood and other body fluids. In this paper are reported results from studies on clinical patients who had malnutrition, cystic fibrosis and other related electrolyte disorders. Physical conditions in the irradiation sites within the beryllium reflector are such that liquids, slurries and wet tissues (the types of sample obtained from patients) can be irradiated in sealed polyethylene vials without pretreatment. This facilitates a precise semi-routine activation analysis for large numbers of samples from patients. A stable activable tracer technique has been developed to determine the extracellular fluid volume (ECV) of infants. A regulated dose of sodium bromide is injected into the patient and, following short-term equilibration and dilution of this sample, a small blood sample is taken, yielding 50 μl of plasma. The plasma bromide concentration is determined by80Br (T=18 m) activation. In order to check the accuracy of this NAA technique, some samples were cross-checked by a microdiffusion method. The technique has been applied to 230 patients and controls, and has proved to be simple, rapid, accurate and sensitive for determining ECV to ±6%. Patients with cystic fibrosis (C. F.) were studied with respect to their growth, and their sodium and electrolyte balance. In related clinical studies, hair and nail clippings from 50 C. F. patients and control children of the same age groups were activated at SLOWPOKE and Cu, Ca, Br, Cl, K, Na and I, determined for use in differentiating C. F., along with a number of other elements including Zn, Mn, Al, Ti and Ni which showed little difference. A careful analysis of the data showed that clear differentiation of all C. F. patients from controls could be achieved by comparing the values of X-factor. A fairly good correlation of hair and nail concentrations was found for a number of the elements determined, suggesting that either tissue may be used in future studies.

Hair as a bio-indicator: Limitations and complications in the interpretation of results

As part of a larger occupational exposure study in which the concentrations of 18 elements were measured in head hair and toenail collected from steel plant workers, a number of factors associated with interpreting the data obtained were examined. In this paper, some of the limitations and complications associated with hair and nail analysis that were thereby recognised are discussed. Data obtained from the occupational study demonstrated the potential for misinterpreting hair or nail analysis data either through describing results averaged over a group by arithmetic instead of geometric means or through not accounting for the age range of subjects in groups to be compared. Examples that arose from the study indicated that differences between hair from the same subjects grown at different times can both complicate and assist in interpreting hair analysis results. In an investigation into the addition and removal of metallic powders, it was found that both hair and nail can directly incorporate elements through contact with dust.

Industrial wastewater treatment for toxic heavy metals using natural materials as adsorbants

The presence of toxic heavy elements such as arsenic, cadmium and mercury in industrial wastewater and waterways is a serious pollution problem. The treatment of such contaminated water by conventional techniques, which often includes an ion-exchange or similar step, is expensive. This paper examines the use of natural materials such as hair, and certain plants, which are inexpensive, for the absorption and hence the clean up of heavy elements from polluted water. Our results show that these natural materials concentrate the heavy elements, in certain cases, to the extent of up to 500 fold or even better. The contact time required is of the order of several hours. The capacities of absorption vary from about 1 g/kg to about 5 g/kg for mercury, and are lower for arsenic and cadmium. The results show that with hair, nearly 10,000 liters of mercury contaminated water, a typical daily output from a 100 ton chlor-alkali plant, can be treated with about 1/2 kg of hair valued at about 25 cents. This makes the process extremely cost-effective compared to the conventional processes now in use.

Human hair as a pollutant dosimeter

Human hair has been proved to be a better dosimeter than even blood for tracing most of the heavy metal toxins when they penetrate the biosphere. The high precision of the neutron activation analysis (NAA) enabled researchers to elegantly differentiate between endogenous and exogenous contamination and to thoroughly study poisonings caused by these physiologically-unimportant elements. An extensive amount of bench-scale work has been accomplished in these laboratories to show the capacity of INAA to detect the presence of 10 nuclides (or more) with a precision of about 5%. The principal objective of the present study was to employ this assaying power and the tendency of scalp hair to uptake metals from aqueous solutions, to design an adsorption system which can easily be used by the waste-management people who are searching for a cost-effective technique to monitor and remove these pollutants from relatively large volumes of industrial effluents.

Leachability of toxic elements from solid wastes

We have examined the leachability of the toxic elements cadmium, arsenic, mercury, and selenium from solid wastes. The solid wastes studied are municipal incinerator ash, coal fly ash, hospital incinerator ash, raw sewage sludge, sewage incinerator bottom ash, and sewage incinerator lagoon ash (which is a combination of bottom and fly ashes). Cadmium displayed the greatest leachability in all waste types, with 76% leached from the municipal refuse incinerator ash. Although the sources of elements in the wastes are diverse, the leachability and hence the bioavailability in the incinerator ash appears mainly determined by the volatility of the element.

Total soluble and insoluble sulfur concentrations in urban snow

Total soluble and insoluble sulfur concentrations in urban snow collected around the island of Montreal were measured by using proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) techniques. Cobalt was chosen as the internal standard for the soluble fractions while aluminum, whose concentration was determined by instrumental neutron activation analysis (NIAA), was used for the particulate matter. Feasibility experiments using induced coupled plasma (ICP) spectrometry were also employed to determine soluble sulfur concentration in snow collected from several inner-city Toronto sites and from Sault St. Marie, Ontario. The use of of a 0.40-..mu..m Nuclepore filter revealed that between 85% and 90% of the sulfur was water soluble. The average total concentration was about 1500 ..mu..g os S/L of snow. Total annual bulk deposition was estimated to be 1300 mg/(m/sup 2/ year) for the soluble portion and 200 mg/(m/sup 2/ year) for the particulate matter. Enrichment factor values strongly suggested that sulfur arises predominantly from anthropogenic sources. Element pair correlations with manganese and the possible role of manganese as a catalytic oxidant of sulfur are discussed.

Aerosol Laser Ablation Mass Spectrometry of Suspended Powders from PM Sources and Its Implications to Receptor Modeling

Abstract Primary sources of particulate matter (PM) were analyzed by suspending powdered samples into an aerosol laser ablation mass spectrometer (LAMS). PM sources studied included vehicle exhaust particulates, dust from a non-ferrous smelter, cement powder, incinerator fly ash, two coal fly ash samples, and two soils. Marker peaks signified certain PM source sectors: construction particles could be distinguished by abundant Ca and Ca compounds, fuel combustion was marked by elemental carbon clusters, and nonferrous industrial particles showed inorganic As, Cu, Pb, Zn, and SOx. In addition to the distinction between particles from these different source sectors, mass spectral results also showed that for a single source, different particle types existed, and among different sources within a sector, similar spectra were present. The aerosol LAMS results show the difficulty in differentiating among separate fly ash sources as well as among different soil samples. A particle class balance receptor model that measures the amount of specific particle types rather than the amount of a chemical component is suggested as a means of source apportionment when particle spectra with overlapping source possibilities occur. The assumptions and limitations of receptor modeling aerosol LAMS data are also described. In particular, methods need to be developed to account for the contribution of secondary sources.

Multi-element correlations for airborne particulate source attribution

Photon and thermal neutron activation analysis were used to analyze airborne particulate matter obtained during the period January to March of 1984 for up to thirty elements. Elemental concentrations and meteorological data from the Toronto, Ontario area were subjected to factor analysis and the major sources of particulate deduced. Elemental profiles for six sources, viz. crustal soil, automobile exhaust, road salt, refuse incineration, oil combustion and an unidentified arsenic source, were used in a chemical element balance to quantitatively determine the contribution of each source to the ambient aerosol. Re-entrained soil contributed 67%, automobile exhaust contributed 15% and the other sources contributed lesser amounts to the inorganic particulate matter. Particle-size distributions for nine elements, viz. Al, Fe, Sc, As, Br, Cl, Zn, Mn, V, are presented as an argument for the development of receptor models involving particle-size distribution data.