ABSTRACT
A method is presented which is sensitive enough for the determination of vanadium (V) in marine organisms such as mussels and algae. It was sufficiently checked by a reference material and it was applied to V determination in blue mussels and brown algae from the German Bight.
Subject(s)
Bivalvia/chemistry , Phaeophyceae/chemistry , Vanadium/analysis , Animals , Germany , Spectrophotometry, Atomic/instrumentationABSTRACT
The applicability of terms such as "safety level" and "safety factor" for the purpose of risk assessment in the frame of the marine dumping conventions is discussed. In view of a series of experiments on sublethal effects of cadmium on marine organisms it is stated that the dose-response relationships cover a range of 10(4), and that there is no indication that the lowest level found so far is actually just above a no-effect threshold.
Subject(s)
Cadmium/toxicity , Marine Biology , Water Pollutants, Chemical/toxicity , Water Pollutants/toxicity , Animals , Dose-Response Relationship, DrugABSTRACT
Some important environmental poisons, e.g. the element cadmium, are rather volatile during flameless AAS determination. This causes difficulties the in case of matrices consisting of large amounts of salts and organic materials. Therefore, as an example in the case of cadmium, a detailed method has been developed. The following method is now used for determinations in large series of samples. Its main advantages are: the sample size must not exceed the mg to microng range; the digestion takes place in small polypropylene tubes and in the graphite tube itself; to obtain high accuracy, a special device for the flamless AAS is used. An intercalibration exercise will be described elsewhere.
