Abstract Details

Mercury Accumulation and Speciation in the Soil of the South San Francisco Bay, California
Abstract ID	ENV-01
Presenter	Brandy  Barnett
Presentation Type	Poster
Full Author List	Brandy Barnett (1)
Affiliations	(1) CSU, East Bay
Category	Environmental Science
Abstract	Mercury contamination is continually being released into the South San Francisco Bay from the historic New Almaden Quicksilver Mine area in Santa Clara County, California. Samples from a variety of locations around the extended mine area were collected and analyzed using cold vapor atomic absorption (CVAA). The data collected show a correlation between total mercury concentration and distance from the mine. Soil samples of high mercury concentration located near the mercury mine were analyzed using x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The soil samples show a large contribution of sulfur in first shell neighboring atoms. Samples of two different locations show a small contribution from oxygen. One of the samples was fit with a cinnabar hexagonal crystal structure. None of the New Almaden samples show any contribution from a methyl group. The New Almaden Mine was identified to be a silica carbonate type mercury deposit from the presence of cobalt, nickel, and zinc in the x-ray fluorescence spectra.
Footnotes
Funding Acknowledgement	This research was supported in part by the Center for Integrated Coastal Observation, Research, and Education (CICORE), funded by the National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA). Portions of this research were carried out at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL), a national user facility operated by Stanford University on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. The SSRL Structural Molecular Biology Program is supported by the Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, and by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources, Biomedical Technology Program.