An operationally defined method to determine the speciation of mercury

This paper presents a modified method of an operationally determined speciation of mercury in soil. The analytical work was mainly concerned to suit properly with inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). Soil samples analysed in this study were selected from open areas around a crematorium, a waste incinerator, and two power plants. Results show that both topsoil and subsoil samples were dominated by elemental mercury Hg(0) and mercuric sulphide (HgS). The significant correlation between sulphur concentration and HgS was found in topsoil samples.