Development of Improved Detection Systems for Monitoring of Toxic Heavy Metals in Contaminated Groundwaters and Soils - DIMDESMOTOM

Toxic Heavy Metals (THM) are well known pollutants from both natural or antropogenic sources. Their deposits in solid or liquid solutions have several ways to spread out (including both physical and chemical transformations) and thus to get into the trofic chain. The current "in situ" THM detection systems are generally limited to spectrophotometric chemical test kits. These offer the convenience of field analysis but have several important limitations: Speciation is not achieved, only total content is determined Chemical and physical interferences to measured signal can be dramatic Still require a high degree of user competence Thus, data are poor to determine trends in pollution and to contribute to a proper risk assessment. A solution to this problem will directly contribute to the EU policy for environmental information and protection of ground waters and soils (EU council inter-institutional dossier 97/0067 (SYN))