Comparative Studies of Heavy Metals in MineWater by Square Wave Stripping Voltammetryand Atomic Spectroscopy

摘要

Inductively coupled plasma- optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) and square wave voltammetry (SWV) were used to analyse and compare the concentrations of Cu, Cd, Hg, Pb and Zn in polluted mine water samples from Shilbottle in North Eastern England, United Kingdom. The results obtained revealed the concentrations of Hg, Cd and Pb, generally above the WHO (2006) toxic limits of 0.001, 0.003 and 0.001ppm across the site. The release of these metals was attributed to low pH and the metals were readily bioavailable to the environment contaminating the underground and surface waters. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson’s correlation coefficients showed strong positive correlation among the concentrations of the different metal ions across the site at P = .05 which clearly indicates their common source of pollution. However, ICP-OES technique exhibited lower detection limits compared to SWV stripping technique and only Cu, and Pb were detected in the mine water samples by the SWV stripping.