Metals
Metals such as Cadmium, Lead and Mercury are know as heavy metals and are toxic to humans. Other metals such as Copper, Manganese and Zinc are required by living organisms at trace levels but are detrimental at elevated levels.
The Environment Agency document CLR8 gives guidance on which metals, or metalloids, are considered hazardous to human health and which processes can lead to their presence in soil, e.g. Cadmium can be found in land that was previously used for electronics manufacturing.
A state of the art microwave digestion system is used to extract the compounds for analysis. This technique ensures maximum possible recovery of metals from the soil.
Our standard suite consists of
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Arsenic (As)
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Cadmium (Cd)
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Total Chromium (Cr)
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Copper (Cu)
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Lead (Pb)
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Nickel (Ni)
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Mercury (Hg)
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Zinc (Zn)
Many other elements of interest including Barium (Ba), Beryllium (Be), Manganese (Mn), Selenium (Se) and Vanadium (V) can also be determined.
Nicholls Colton Analytical utilises the latest Shimadzu ICP-OES instrumentation for identification and quantitative determination of the aforementioned metals.