AVERAGE PARTICLE SIZE RATIOS AND CHEMICAL SPECIATION OF COPPER AND ZINC IN ROAD-DUST SAMPLES

摘要

Road-dust samples were taken from areas of high traffic flows in Irbid City; Jordan. A series of < 90, 90- < 106, 106- < 125, 125- < 250, 250-< 1000 and 1000-< 2000 μm of road-dust particle size fractions were investigated throughout to evaluate the ratio between metal content in each particle size fraction and total metal content. Atomic absorption spectrometry technique was used throughout. Sequential procedure was used for chemical speciation in road dust samples of < 90 μm. This procedure permits a reproducible evaluation of the partitioning of Cu and Zn among the various chemical forms in which they are present in street dust. Two reference standard materials BCR-CRM 142R and NIST-SRM 2709 were tested to validate the propo sed method. Results show that there was no significant difference between the measured values for Cu and Zn and their certified values with RSD of less than 5%.