Assessment of the natural variability of B, Cd, Cu, Fe, Pb, Sr, Tl and Zn concentrations and isotopic compositions in leaves, needles and mushrooms using single sample digestion and two-column matrix separation

Abstract

Over 240 samples are analyzed for concentration and isotopic composition of eight elements.

Ranges of B, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Pb, Sr, Tl, and Zn Concentrations and Isotope Ratios in Environmental Matrices from an Urban Area

“…e development of isotope-based techniques in environmental science has grown exponentially in the last few decades [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Recent studies in the field are increasingly adopting multielemental approaches to determine sample provenance [7][8][9], fingerprint pollution sources [10][11][12][13][14] and identify biochemical processes [15,16].…”

“…Nowadays, the ability to unambiguously interpret highquality MC-ICP-MS data is increasingly limited by a lack of data on the isotopic variability of environmental samples, i.e., is the identified difference in isotopic compositions between two samples within a range to be expected for the sample type given natural variability or not? e severity of the issue was highlighted in a previous study whereof the total concentrations and isotope ratios of a number of elements in leaves, needles, and mushrooms from northern Sweden were determined [2]. Even after removing some known sources of variation such as sampling height (for leaves and needles) and sampling period, very broad ranges in isotopic compositions of many elements were found across samples collected over a confined geographic area.…”

The Stability of Fe-Isotope Signatures During Low Salinity Mixing in Subarctic Estuaries

“…Details of the analytical procedure as well as instrument parameters and analysis conditions can be found elsewhere (Rodushkin and Ruth 1997;Rodushkin et al 2005). The analytical procedure was validated with SLRS-4 River Water CRM for Trace Metals, SLEW-2 Estuarine Water CRM for Trace Metals and NASS-4 open ocean water (supplied by National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada), (Rodushkin et al 2005(Rodushkin et al , 2016. Fe was analysed on three different instrument runs with an average detection limit (LOD) of 14 nM for the dissolved samples and 21 nM for the particulate samples taken in 2013 and 2014 (LOD = X bl + 3SD bl , X bl = mean concentration of Fe in blanks; SD bl = Standard deviation of blanks).…”

“…After the sample was loaded, the matrix was washed with 9.6 M HCl, and Cu was eluted with 8 ml 5 M Cl. Afterwards, Fe was eluted with 6 ml 2 M HCl and could be used for further steps (Rodushkin et al 2016). After evaporating to dryness, 50 µL of concentrated HNO 3 was pipetted directly to the residue followed by the addition of 5 mL MQwater.…”

Answer to reviewer #1

“…1). Samples from this region collected during this cruise have also been studied for DOC (Alling et al, 2010;Bröder et al, 2016;Karlsson et al, 2016;Salvadó et al, 2017), dissolved inorganic carbon , POC (Karlsson et al, 2016;Sánchez-García et al, 2011), nutrients and alkalinity (Anderson et al, 2009;Pipko et al, 2017), and stable O isotopes (Rosén et al, 2015).…”