Did you know that each of these tracers could follow its own marine story, quite decoupled from the others? This is what is shown and discussed by Zheng and co-workers (2019, see reference below) after having analysed about 500 samples for aluminium (Al), manganese (Mn), lead (Pb) and cobalt (Co) along three sections in the […]
Apr / 24 / 2019
Human activities, such as the combustion of leaded petrol, emissions from non-ferrous metal smelting, coal combustion and waste incineration constitute major environmental lead (Pb) sources during the past century. This resulted in a considerable increase of anthropogenic Pb in the surface and deep waters of the North Atlantic, large enough to mask the natural lead […]
Oct / 05 / 2016
Since the phasing-out of leaded automobile gasoline, the imprint of industrial lead is decreasing everywhere. Antarctica snow and ice are no exception to this general rule, as shown by measurements of lead (Pb) concentration and isotopic composition in these environments as well as in the Amundsen Sea Polynya. Up to 95% of the Pb at the […]
Jul / 07 / 2016
Stable lead isotopes have been measured by Maxence Paul and co-workers along 40°S during the first and second legs of the UK GEOTRACES cruise (GA10) in the Atlantic Ocean. They clearly help to identify three different end-members and mixing between them: open ocean South Atlantic seawater, Indian Ocean seawater, and coastal inputs from South Africa. […]
Jan / 15 / 2016
A new method for the determination of seawater lead (Pb) isotope compositions and concentrations was developed, which combines and optimizes previously published protocols for the separation and isotopic analysis of this element. It involves 1 to 2 L of seawater, double spike, magnesium hydroxide coprecipitation, anion exchange chromatography and thermal ionization mass spectrometry. Ratios involving the […]
Mar / 06 / 2015
Zurbrick and co-authors present a relatively fast (2.5–6.5 hours), semi-automated system to extract lead (Pb) from seawater, with few chemicals yielding low blanks. They also demonstrate that subsequent Pb isotopic analyses are more precise using a multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICPMS) than high resolution ICP-MS (HR ICP-MS). With the preceding work of Conway […]
Dec / 03 / 2013