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EFFECTS OF HUMIC SUBSTANCES ON ATTENUATION OF METALS: BIOAVAILABILITY AND MOBILITY IN SOIL
Citation:
Impellitteri**, C A. AND H. E. Allen. EFFECTS OF HUMIC SUBSTANCES ON ATTENUATION OF METALS: BIOAVAILABILITY AND MOBILITY IN SOIL. Chapter 6, R. Hamon, M. McLaughlin, E. Lombi, J. W. Gorsuch (ed.), Natural Attentuation of Trace Element Availability in Soils. CRC Press - Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, Boca Raton, FL, , 89-112, (2007).
Impact/Purpose:
This chapter discusses the different components that constitute soil organic matter and focuses on the influence of organic matter on the natural attenuation of metal contaminants in soils.
Description:
Humic substances play vastly important roles in metal behavior in a wide variety of environments. They can affect the mobility and bioavailability of metals by binding and sequestration thereby decreasing the mobility of a metal. They can also transport metals into solution or bind them in solution preventing the sorption of metal onto the solid phase. The inclusion of humic substances in assessing the risk from contaminant metals in the environment is rarely done though critical. Ignoring the presence of humic substances will hopefully become less problematic in the future as we gain more knowledge concerning the structure of these molecules and more exactly define their roles on contaminants in the environment.
This chapter reviews methods of microscopic and macroscopic characterization of humic substances. It addresses the importance of operational definitions of humic substances and how these definitions vary between researchers. The chapter then focuses on the relationships between humic substances and metals with emphasis on the mobilization of metals by humic substances. Lastly, a case study illustrates the importance of humic substances in the mobilization of Cu and Pb in a series of Dutch soils.
