Magnetic particles as tracers of industrial pollution: a review
Presenting person: Dr. Eduard Petrovsky, Geophysical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, PragueTh. 2004-11-18 (16:15), H6
In recent years and decades, since the pioneering works of Thompson and Oldfield in seventies, magnetic measurements have been used at different scales to identify and outline approximately the extent of environmental pollution. These studies have been dealing with atmospheric particles directly, as well as river and lake sediments and soils. In many cases, significant correlation was found with concentrations of several heavy metals. Moreover, some few recent studies discuss the potential of magnetic properties to be linked with organic pollutants. The whole research of magnetometry in pollution is based on simple assumption of coexistence of magnetic particles and pollutants, mainly heavy metals. This coexistence is given by the same source (industrial unit), the same pathways of transport and deposition. It seems that this coexistence plays the most important role, although magnetic particles can serve also as carriers of the heavy metals, either adsorbed on their surface, or incorporated into their structure. For example, fly ash of a coal-burning power plant can contain up to 10% of magnetic particles, some authors refer as much as 18%. These particles, upon their deposition on soils, are accumulated in uppermost few centimetres of topsoil and can be easily detected by surface soil magnetic measurements, assuming that other contributions (lithogenic, pedogenic) to magnetic enhancement are negligible or can be eliminated. In this talk, a review of the recent results of these studies will be provided, presenting studies carried out mainly in central Europe, and dealing with different aspects of this research. Moreover, limits of the application of the method will be discussed.
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