The Study Of Particulate Mercury Pollution In The Atmospheric Aerosols

As mercury and its compounds have strong biological toxicity, the environmentalists and hygienists have pay more and more attention about the problem of mercury hazards. The situation of mercury pollution is serious throughout the world, especially for the atmospheric mercury pollution caused by the combustion of coal. China has abundant resources of coal and mercury and faced more serious problem of mercury pollution. Former study mainly focus on the Hg? and the study of paniculate mercury is relatively poor and not systematical. But in some cases, particulate mercury is die important form of atmospheric mercury, and plays a notable role in the regional mercury cycle. There is a tendency to strengthen the study of particulate mercury.The problem of environmental pollution calls for the multi-disciplinary research. With the principle of geochemistry and geophysics, peoples can understand how the hazard substances transform in the environment, so as to forecast the quality and change of the environment, to show the affects of human activity, and to provide the resolution for the sustainable utility of resources and prevention and cure of pollution. With the joint methods of measurement of mercury vapor and nuclear geophysics, one can do multi-element analysis with high sensitivity and accuracy, which is favorable to study the environmental effects and concomitance of mercury and other pollutants, to trace the pollution sources.With the support of project "Mercury Pollution in the Atmospheric Aerosols and its Environmental Effects " granted by National Science Funds of China, the paper development and utilize the methods of the environmental geophysics to study the characteristics of mercury pollution in the atmospheric aerosols of very typical environments including Chengdu industrial area and mercury deposits in Wuchuan of Guizhou province. The main researching results are as follows: (1) Based on die technology of measurement of mercury vapor and environmental nuclear geophysics, the paper established the environmental geophysical method used in the mercury pollution study of atmospheric aerosols, and demonstrate the feasibility of employment of such method, which provide the foundation for the later research.(2) The paper discussed the choice of references used in the computation of enrichment factor of aerosols, developed a new method to compute the enrichment factor with the theory of geochemical baseline. Based on the mercury baseline of soil in the Chengdu area, the mercury enrichment factors of suspended matter of Chengdu industrial area are computed again better to show the degree of particulate mercury pollution caused by the human activities.(3) With the application of environmental geophysical method, coal samples from Southwest of China, and combustion residue of coal and coal samples from Chengdu power plant are analyzed. It is proved that such elements as Se, Sb and As can be seen as the indicator of combustion pollutants of coal, which offer a better condition for the mercury pollution in the aerosols.(4) With the application of environmental geophysical method, the paper studied the characteristics of mercury pollution in the aerosols of Chengdu industrial area, which include both the seasonal, day and night variation of particulate mercury and the distribution of particulate mercury in the different grades of aerosols. Also the factor analysis model is used to determine the main factor affecting the mercury level of atmospheric suspending dust ( radius less than 10 n m). The results show that the industrial area is now facing the serious situation of mercury pollution, and the mercury level of aerosols is much higher than the background level of particulate mercury, and also higher than those of other industrial both inside and outside of the country. Particulate mercury has become one of the main form of atmospheric mercury deposition, which keeps good correlation with the mass level of aerosols and is restricted by the meteorological conditions with higher level in the winte...