Teledyne Leeman Labs Blog

Hey Again! Let’s talk about having some fun while saving some money — lots of money, as a matter of fact!

In the world of green this and green that, with electric vehicles, lawn equipment, and scooters, we want to do our part to make the planet a better place.

“While the invading forces marched in the streets of Copenhagen, I was busy dissolving Laue’s and also James Franck’s [Nobel Prize] medals.”¹

Let us travel back to the 1940s. The Second World War is sweeping across Europe. As Denmark is being occupied by German forces, George de Hevesy doesn’t need to use weapons to protect his colleagues. He relies on science!

If this is your first time visiting www.teledyneleemanlabs.com and/or stumbling upon our blog, Teledyne Leeman Labs has been in the business of making benchtop mercury analyzers for over 30 years. Myself, I’ve been with the company, wearing a variety of different hats, for 24 years. Prior to landing this 24-year gig, I was an analytical research chemist at the University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) in Grand Forks, ND. So, with a career like this, I’ve seen a lot of data - some good, and some not so good!

For many cappuccino and latte lovers, the ideal coffee coupling consists of a warm microfoam meticulously mingled with a favorite coffee.  And, a seemingly magical dose of microfoam is at the crux of latte art for coffee aficionados. But, can foam and coffee work together to remedy water pollution problems? A new study reveals how coffee and foam can function in concert to divorce destructive chemicals, such as mercury, from polluted water.

The study, published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, explained how researchers from the American Chemical Society used spent coffee grounds and bioelastomeric foam to remediate water. The foam, infused with expended coffee grounds, performed as a filter.  Water is deemed remediated when pollutants are eliminated so it is safely consumable for people to drink.

Nearly 1,050 women from 37 locations across 25 countries were the subjects of a recent report, Mercury in Women of Childbearing Age in 25 Countries, which measured mercury levels in their hair samples. The study found significantly elevated mercury concentrations in the hair of women in numerous regions of the world. The high levels of mercury were caused by three main sources of mercury pollution: coal- fired power plants (one of the main sources globally that contaminate oceans with mercury that accumulates in fish), artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) and local contaminated sites from various industries releasing mercury to soil, water and air.

A report published in the journal Epidemiology suggested that people who eat a gluten-free diet might be at risk of increased exposure to arsenic and mercury. While people with celiac disease are advised to eat a diet that is free of gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley, the number of people eating gluten-free diets has increased significantly the past several years. More than a quarter of Americans in 2015 claimed to be eating a gluten-free diet, an increase of 67 percent from 2013. Many gluten-free products use rice flour as a substitute for wheat. Rice is known to accumulate toxic metals such as arsenic and mercury from fertilizers, soil and water.

Scientists are increasingly using trees for biomonitoring mercury and other atmospheric pollutants. Leaves from a variety of species have been widely used for measuring mercury pollution, but when it comes to pine, only the pine bark has been used. Scientist have started to study a strip of pine trees adjacent to Almadén in south central Spain, where the largest cinnabar deposits in the world have been mined for more than 2,000 years to obtain metallic mercury. The scientists are specifically collecting pine tree needles from sites adjacent to the mining strip in order to evaluate the needles as monitors of mercury contamination. For the study, published in October 2017 in Environmental Science and Pollution Research, scientist also gathered leaves, needles and soil from other locations to monitor mercury contamination in the area during the night and day.

Researchers have turned coffee grounds into a spongy filter that absorbs heavy metals from water. The filter, which was described in the September 2016 issue of the American Chemical Society's journal Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, is composed of 60 wt % of spent coffee powder and 40 wt percent of silicone elastomer using the sugar leaching technique. The researchers found that by adding sugar and silicone to the coffee, they were able to create a foamy brick that when soaked in water would leach out the sugar, leaving the coffee grounds to bind to metal in the water.

Teledyne Leeman Labs completed a study using its Hydra II_C mercury analyzer in Volatile Hydrocarbon (VHC) mode to determine the total mercury in kerosene. We published a technical note that demonstrates the capabilities of the Hydra II_C to determine the level of mercury by direct combustion of the kerosene. The system was also configured with an enhanced moisture control system.

The Hydra II_C is an independent standalone analyzer that uses Cold Vapor Atomic Absorbance (CVAA) spectroscopy to obtain reliable quantitative data from simple to complex matrices by direct combustion combined with a proprietary catalyst to remove interfering compounds such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides. The biggest advantage of the Hydra II_C is that no sample preparation is required before analysis. And, because no sample preparation is required; the cost and hassle of dealing with waste disposal is avoided.

Clear Lake near Clearlake Oaks, California is home to the Elem Indian Colony, but while it has been an area of spiritual significance to the colony, it has better known as a toxic dump for mercury contamination as a result of the Sulfur Bank abandoned mine. For more than a century, the mine has leached tons of mercury in to the lake, poisoning the tribe’s food chain and the fish in the lake. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been studying the mine since 1990, and engaged in a number of cleanup operations and preventive efforts to reduce the contaminated runoff.  The EPA considers the mine a high priority and will complete a feasibility study in the spring of 2017.