A reconnaissance of contaminants in the Fraser River drainage basin using dated sediment cores from six lakes /

Often, the source of the contaminant can be surmised either from the patterns of contamination (for example congener distribution of PCBs) or from the known history of contaminating sources within the drainage (for example Hg mining or the establishment of a pulp mill). [...] The magnitude of the spike was chosen to be at least 10 times the expected amount of Hg in the sample. [...] To analyze the mercury contained on the gold trap, a nichrome wire coil was placed around the trap, and the trap was inserted into the analytical train between the incoming Hg-free helium and the fluorescence detector. [...] The area reject, determined from the ion chromatogram of each compound, is the area of a peak with height three times the maximum height of the noise. [...] However, activities such as mining play no role in Moose Lake, and the predominant source of the contaminant Pb is likely to be the automobile traffic along the north side of the lake.