Ali Marefat; Abdol Reza Karbassi
Abstract
Estuaries are considered as the most important source of different pollutants, especially heavy metals toward the lakes, seas and oceans. The research aim is to investigate the heavy metals behavior in the estuarine zone, where a Sea and a River meet each other. In this research, samples of Suspended ...
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Estuaries are considered as the most important source of different pollutants, especially heavy metals toward the lakes, seas and oceans. The research aim is to investigate the heavy metals behavior in the estuarine zone, where a Sea and a River meet each other. In this research, samples of Suspended Particulate Materials (SPMs) and water of Sefidrud River and Caspian Sea were sampled to simulate the estuary physically. Sequential extraction procedure was performed to determined heavy metals concentration in different species. Adsorption-Desorption experiment revealed that during estuarine mixing while manganese and copper are desorbed from SPMs by 531 and 5/4 ppm respectively, zinc and lead are adsorbed by 19 and 8 ppm respectively. Nickel shows a conservative behavior in the Adsorption-Desorption experiment. Risk Assessment Code (RAC) was applied in this study to determine potential of heavy metals release from SPMs as they enter estuarine mixing zone. Results show Mn is likely to release more from SPMs due to environmental changes.
