Detection of metal contamination in wild asparagus near a waste disposal site

This article discusses the estimating of contaminant distributions in environmental media in the context of its necessity in evaluating human and ecological hazards. Because of uncertainties in release histories and transport, traditional sampling and statistical techniques applicable to the experimental sciences may not be suitable for exploratory studies at hazardous waste sites. An approach that relies on cluster analysis of principal components (PCA) was used to identify contaminated wild asparagus growing in the vicinity of waste disposal sites along the Columbia River in southeast Washington state. Metals in soil samples taken from the sites contained elevated levels of silver (Ag), aluminum (Al), barium, (Ba), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), antimony (Sb), zinc (Zn), and vanadium (V). Samples of asparagus tissue were collected from the river near the waste site, from Hanford oil fields abandoned 52 year years ago, and from commercial fields in the neighboring communities. Dried tissues were analyzed for metals content by ICP‐mass spec‐trometry, furnace AA, and cold vapor AA. Tissue concentrations of elements varied over five orders of magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]