Approaching mercury distribution in burial environment using PLS-R modelling

Mercury environmental cycle and toxicology have been widely researched. Given the long history of mercury pollution, researching mercury trends in the past can help to understand its behaviour in the present. Archaeological skeletons have been found to be useful sources of information regarding mercury loads in the past. In our study we applied a soil multi-sampling approach in two burials dated to the 5th to 6th centuries AD. PLRS modelling was used to elucidate the factors controlling mercury distribution. The model explains 72% of mercury variance and suggests that mercury accumulation in the burial soils is the result of complex interactions. The decomposition of the bodies not only was the primary source of mercury to the soil but also responsible for the pedogenetic transformation of the sediments and the formation of soil components with the ability to retain mercury. The amount of soft tissues and bone mass also resulted in differences between burials, indicating that the skeletons were a primary/secondary source of mercury to the soil (i.e. temporary sink). Within burial variability seems to depend on the proximity of the soil to the thoracic area, where the main mercury target organs were located. We also conclude that, in coarse textured soils, as the ones studied in this investigation, the finer fraction (i.e. silt + clay) should be analysed, as it is the most reactive and the one with the higher potential to provide information on metal cycling and incipient soil processes. Finally, our study stresses the need to characterise the burial soil environment in order to fully understand the role of the interactions between soil and skeleton in mercury cycling in burial contexts.

A Preliminary Study on Dependence of Mercury Distribution on the Degree of Coalification in Ningwu Coalfield, Shanxi, China

Mercury (Hg) is a toxic trace element emitted from coal conversion and utilization. Samples with different coal ranks and gangue from Ningwu Coalfield are selected and investigated in this study. For understanding dependence of mercury distribution characteristics on coalification degree, Pearson regression analysis coupled with Spearman rank correlation is employed to explore the relationship between mercury and sulfur, mercury and ash in coal, and sequential chemical extraction method is adopted to recognize the Hg speciation in the samples of coal and gangue. The measured results show that Hg is positively related to total sulfur content in coal and the affinity of Hg to different sulfur forms varies with the coalification degree. Organic sulfur has the biggest impact on Hg in peat, which becomes weak with increasing the coalification degree from lignite to bituminous coal. Sulfate sulfur is only related to Hg in peat or lignite as little content in coal. However, the Pearson linear correlation coefficients of Hg and pyritic sulfur are relatively high with 0.479 for lignite, 0.709 for sub-bituminous coal and 0.887 for bituminous coal. Hg is also related to ash content in coal, whose Pearson linear correlation coefficients are 0.504, 0.774 and 0.827 respectively, in lignite, sub-bituminous coal and bituminous coal. Furthermore, Hg distribution is directly depended on own speciation in coal. The total proportion of F2 + F3 + F4 is increased from 41.5% in peat to 87.4% in bituminous coal, but the average proportion of F5 is decreased from 56.8% in peat to 12.4% in bituminous coal. The above findings imply that both Hg and sulfur enrich in coal largely due to the migration from organic state to inorganic state with the increase of coalification degree in Ningwu Coalfield.