As Leaching into Fresh Water from Highly Contaminated Hawaiian Soils
Abstract
Arsenic contamination of current and former agricultural soils in Hawaii is an unfortunate legacy of plantation era agricultural practices. Here, we report an investigation of As mobility in fresh water from highly contaminated (0.8 % As) A-zone Hawaiian andisols from the Hamakua Coast of the Island of Hawai’i. Aliquots of the same acidic soil (pH= 5.0) were exposed to fresh water for varying lengths of time and analyzed to quantify the fraction of As and other elements leached from the soil relative to concentrations determined by total digestion. A maximum of 0.04% of As and 0.05% of Fe were removed from the soils in initial rinses and multi-day leaches using 18 megaohm Millipore water, in experiments lasting up to 35 days. Arsenic concentrations were highest in initial soil rinses, indicating that a small fraction of the total As in the soil is either loosely bound or present as a fine-grained, soluble As-bearing phase. During subsequent leaching experiments, arsenic and most other inorganic ions that we analyzed for reached equilibrium after 3 days; Fe reached equilibrium concentrations after 10 days. All soil solutions contained As levels that exceeded the EPA acceptable drinking water limit of 0.01 ppm. However, contaminant transport modeling suggests that As contaminated leachates would not migrate substantially from this site, so that local isolation and storage of contaminated soils would likely be an acceptable containment method.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFM.H23G1038N
- Keywords:
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- 1865 HYDROLOGY / Soils;
- 1871 HYDROLOGY / Surface water quality