An alternative, low cost method for analyzing mercury in soil, sediment and gold mining residues was developed, optimized and applied to 30 real samples. It is semiquantitative, performed using an acid extraction pretreatment step, followed by mercury reduction and collection in a detecting paper containing cuprous iodide. A complex is formed with characteristic color whose intensity is proport...

During May-September 1999 human hair samples were collected from the village of Caimito, a fishing community of the state of Sucre (Colombia), in the San Jorge River basin area, and analyzed for total mercury (t-Hg) by cold vapor atomic absorption spectroscopy. T-Hg was measured in both male and female people aged 15-65 years, whose diet mainly consists of fish collected in nearby marshes. Aver...

This study targets the lesser-known ingredients of smokeless tobacco products, i.e., the toxic metals, in Indian brands. The metals selected in the study included lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), and selenium (Se). The differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry (DPASV) technique was used for estimating the metals Pb, Cd, and Cu; square wave voltammetry for ...

In this study mercury was determined in canned tuna fish produced and distributed in Iran after digestion by the standard methods of AOAC. Mercury contents in fish and canned tuna fish were determined by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The metal content, expressed in mg/kg wet weight for mercury varied from 0.017 to 0.394 (average of 0. 089) and 0.023 to 0.529 (average of 0.146)...

A commercially available direct mercury analyzer (DMA) based on sample combustion, pre-concentration by amalgamation with gold, and atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) was coupled to a sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). The combined system (DMA-ICP-MS) was optimized and evaluated for the determination of mercury in environmental samples using both external...

Hair samples continue to be used extensively for biomonitoring of mercury (Hg) exposure. Routine methods require a bundle of 100-150 hair strands and involve chemical digestion. Recently, Hg analyzers that combine combustion, gold amalgamation, and atomic absorption spectrometry (C-GA-AAS) became commercially available. This method was shown to provide quick and sensitive measurements in solid ...

Two statistical techniques; discriminant analysis (DA) and logistic regression model were used to analyze the concentration of arsenic and heavy metal contents in cockles (Anadara granosa) from two estuaries in the state of Penang, Malaysia. This study was undertaken to understand the interrelationship between different parameters and also to identify probable source component in order to expla...

The concentrations of mercury in forty, commercially available dietary supplements, were determined using a new, inexpensive analysis technique. The method involves thermal decomposition, amalgamation, and detection of mercury by atomic absorption spectrometry with an analysis time of approximately six minutes per sample. The primary cost savings from this approach is that labor-intensive sampl...

We experimentally investigate optical storage with electromagnetically induced transparency in a dense cold (85)Rb atomic ensemble. By varying the optical depth (OD) from 0 to 140, we observe that the optimal storage efficiency has a saturation value of 50% as OD>50. Our result is consistent with that obtained from hot vapor cell experiments.