For the purposes of this Issue Paper, metals most commonly found at Superfund sites will be discussed in terms of the processes affecting their behavior in soils, as well as in those of the laboratory methods available to evaluate this behavior. The retention capacity of soil will also be discussed with regard to the movement of metals between the other environmental compartments: ground water, surface water, or the atmosphere. Long-term changes in soil environmental conditions, due to the effects of remediation systems or to natural weathering processes, are also explained with respect to the enhanced mobility of metals in soils.
A direct and sensitive method for the determination of vanadium concentrations in soil is developed using ultrasonic slurry sampling electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (USSSETAAS). The surfactant, KO300G, is used as the stabilizing agent. The precision and accuracy of the method are investigated. The detection limits are 0.6 and 0.7 µg 1−1 for SRM Montana Soil 2711 and SRM Soil - S, respectively. The method is applied to determine the vanadium content in 10 soil samples from the Wielkopolska region.