Integrated Study of Single Anthropogenic Particles—Magnetic and Environmental Implications

Diana Jordanova; Viktor Hoffmann; Karl Thomas Fehr

doi:10.1071/EN04007

RESEARCH ARTICLE

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Integrated Study of Single Anthropogenic Particles—Magnetic and Environmental Implications

Diana Jordanova ^A ^C ^D , Viktor Hoffmann ^A and Karl Thomas Fehr ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Institute of Geosciences, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.

^B Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany.

^C Present address: Geophysical Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria.

^D Corresponding author (e-mail: vanedi@geophys.bas.bg).

Environmental Chemistry 1(1) 31-34 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN04007
Submitted: 17 March 2004 Accepted: 9 May 2004 Published: 30 June 2004

Environmental Context. Industrial metal production, thermoelectric power plants, and similar technologies can release a large amount of particles (with sizes up to the millimetre scale) of heavy metals into the local surrounds. Up to 10% of these particles are strongly magnetic and easily detectable above the background magnetism. A map of the regional magnetic signals, which would be relatively simple and cheap to produce, provides a guide to pollution ‘hotspots’. But it’s not that simple: The authors integrate chemistry, microscopy, and magnetism studies of single particles of sediments from the Danube River to show rock magnetic parameters established for natural rocks cannot be directly used on environmental man-made particles.

Abstract. The presence of significant amounts of strongly magnetic phases in anthropogenic particulate industrial emissions allows the use of magnetic methods for fast and cheap detection of environmental pollution. The aim of our study is to check the validity of some of the constitutive magnetic parameters and their ratios used for estimation of grain sizes and distance from the pollution source. The results from our integrated magnetic, microscopic, and microchemical study on large, single, anthropogenic particles show that classical rock magnetic parameters (M_rs/M_r, B_cr/B_c) for mineral magnetic characterization cannot be directly applied to the anthropogenic phases. This results from their inhomogeneous composition, often with dendritic exsolution of iron oxides within an aluminosilicate matrix.

Keywords. : anthropogenic emissions — geochemistry (inorganic) — magnetic materials — minerals — particles

Acknowledgement

This research has been supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship of the European Community program ‘Improving Human Potential’ under contract no. HPMF-CT-2000-01084.

References

Integrated Study of Single Anthropogenic Particles—Magnetic and Environmental Implications

Acknowledgement

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