Environmental chemistry. Green chemistry and pollutants in ecosystems / Химия окружающей среды. Зеленая химия и загрязняющие вещества в экосистемах

Soils can act as a sink for anthropogenic and naturally released heavy metals. Among these are heavy metal oxides and sulfides, which are emitted e.g. by mining industry and metal smelting. The dissolution and transformation behavior of these heavy metal phases specifies their fate in the soil and determines whether the metals become bioavailable or could contaminate the groundwater. To gain more information about these dissolution reactions in soils, in-situ methods are needed. We present here a method to fix particulate metal phases on an inert support. This method allows us to expose and recover metal phases in the environment under controlled conditions.

Acrylic glass was chosen as inert polymer substrate for the heavy metal phases as it is stable to weathering. Epoxy resin was used as adhesive film between the acrylic glass support and the heavy metal coating. The fine-grained heavy metal phases are applied onto the epoxy resin using a dust spray gun. The heavy metal coated polymer platelets can be inserted in a controlled way into selected soil profiles and be recovered after definite time intervals. Qualifying and quantifying analysis can be carried out on every single polymer support. <...>