Highway and Urban Environment

The use of commercially available cation exchange cartridges for the on/off-line removal of the major interferences of platinum group elements (PGEs) during analysis by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was investigated and the method was validated using standard solutions and a certified reference material (BCR-723), road dust. The developed method was then applied to the analysis of dated sediment cores taken from the Venetian Lagoon. The results obtained showed enrichment for the PGEs when compared to the mean crustal values, and were in good agreement with the results found by other research groups for sediments from different parts of the globe.