Synthetic silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were studied due to their wide-spread use in industry and medical operations. This thesis investigated the reactions of AgNPs with soil and soil minerals, with a specific emphasis on synthetic birnessite (δ-MnO2) which is known to oxidize AgNPs to its toxic Ag + form. Reactions of AgNPs with iron oxide and soil samples showed that soil removes AgNPs from suspension and that the extent of removal (adsorption/oxidation) may be related to the Fe and Mn contents of a soil. Our investigations of AgNP reactions with δ-MnO2showed that this mineral is an important source of AgNP removal and oxidation. The Ag speciation methodology provided a reasonable estimation of the amount of both AgNP and Ag + in mixtures of the two species. We were unable to detect Ag + recovered from the reactions using the UV-VIS/MP-AES Ag speciation methodology due to strong adsorption of the Ag + ion oxidation product on MnO2 interlayer cation exchange sites, which was confirmed by Ag + /MnO2 experiments. The speciation method was found to be limited by small (~5%) differences between the Ag emission generated from pure AgNP vs. pure Ag + ion in sample solutions. This "nanoeffect" limited the quantitative speciation analysis to samples where the large (% level) proportions of the two Ag species are present. v
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