Environmental risk assessment of potentially toxic elements in Doce River watershed after mining sludge dam breakdown in Mariana, MG, Brazil.

Faced with a potential risk of a colossal amount of sludge released into the Doce River basin in the most shocking Brazilian mining disaster, we proposed to assess the environmental risk from a new perspective: Understanding the mobilization of potentially toxic elements (PTE) with the geochemical fractions. Soil and sediment samples were taken in nine sites throughout the basin and characterized. The environmental risk was assessed from the PTE sequential extraction in three fractions: soluble, reducible, and oxidizable, in addition to the pseudo-total concentration.

Development of new analytical method for preconcentration/speciation of inorganic antimony in bottled mineral water using FIA-HG AAS system and SiO/AlO/SnO ternary oxide.

In the present paper, a new analytical preconcentration/speciation method for antimony species determination in bottled mineral water samples using the SiO/AlO/SnO adsorbent was developed. The method is based on selective adsorption of Sb(III) ions by SiO/AlO/SnO under a wide pH range (2.5-7.