Sediment analysis is very important ininvestigations of the heavy metal burden in theenvironment. In the present work various digestion andextraction procedures were evaluated in order toassess the ...extent of contamination with heavy metalsin sediments from the Moste hydroelectric reservoir.Total acid dissolution, aqua regia digestion andacetic acid extraction procedures were applied tosamples. Zn, Cd, Pb, Co, Ni, Cu and Cr were determinedby flame or electrothermal atomic absorptionspectrometry (FAAS, ETAAS) under optimized measurementconditions. A comparison of total acid dissolutionincluding hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatment and theaqua regia soluble fraction was made to estimatethe applicability of aqua regia digestion inanalysis of total metal concentrations in sediments.In general, good agreement of the results was observedfor Co, Pb, Cu and Zn, however for Cr, Ni and Cdsignificantly lower results were obtained in the aqua regia soluble fraction. In addition, an extraction procedure using 25% v/v acetic acid wasapplied for estimation of the extent of contaminationwith heavy metals originating from anthropogenicactivities. The results indicate that the sedimentsupstream of the reservoir are not contaminated, whilethe sediments from the hydroelectric reservoir showsa significant anthropogenic input of Ni, Zn and Pb,which corresponds well with pollution sources.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
