The Environment is a messy, disordered, inherently inhomogeneous place hardly conducive to conducting precise scientific studies. Which is unfortunate when we need to know detailed information about how chemicals interact with our surroundings. Mercury is a good example, a serious pollutant, but it has so many possible reactions in the environment that studying field samples can give even the most methodical researcher a headache.
In this hot paper Frank Wania et al. at the University of Toronto have sort to reduce the chaos by creating a highly controlled experimental system for studying the fate of mercury in snow. They create, age and melt snow contaminated with mercury and with a variety of compositions to allow a detailed mechanistic study of the fate of the pollutant.
Read their detailed study, which includes a candid discussion of its potential and limitations, here. It’s free to access for the next 4 weeks:
Mercury fate in ageing and melting snow: Development and testing of a controlled laboratory system
Erin Mann, Torsten Meyer, Carl P. J. Mitchell and Frank Wania
J. Environ. Monit., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10297D
