The presence and leachability of antimony in different wastes and waste handling facilities in Norway

Abstract

The environmental behaviour of antimony (Sb) is gathering attention due to its increasingly extensive use in various products, particularly in plastics. Because of this it may be expected that plastic waste is an emission source for Sb in the environment. This study presents a comprehensive field investigation of Sb concentrations in diverse types of waste from waste handling facilities in Norway. The wastes included waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), glass, vehicle fluff, combustibles, bottom ash, fly ash and digested sludge. The highest solid Sb concentrations were found in WEEE and vehicle plastic (from 1238 to 1715 mg kg(-1)) and vehicle fluff (from 34 to 4565 mg kg(-1)). The type of acid used to digest the diverse solid waste materials was also tested. It was found that HNO3:HCl extraction gave substantially lower, non-quantitative yields compared to HNO3:HF. The highest water-leachable concentration for wastes when mixed with water at a 1 : 10 ratio were observed for plastic (from 0.6 to 2.0 mg kg(-1)) and bottom ash (from 0.4 to 0.8 mg kg(-1)). For all of the considered waste fractions, Sb(v) was the dominant species in the leachates, even though Sb(iii) as Sb2O3 is mainly used in plastics and other products, indicating rapid oxidation in water. This study also presents for the first time a comparison of Sb concentrations in leachate at waste handling facilities using both active grab samples and DGT passive samples. Grab samples target the total suspended Sb, whereas DGT targets the sum of free- and other chemically labile species. The grab sample concentrations (from 0.5 to 50 μg L(-1)) were lower than the predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) of 113 μg L(-1). The DGT concentrations were substantially lower (from 0.05 to 9.93 μg L(-1)) than the grab samples, indicating much of the Sb is present in a non-available colloidal form. In addition, air samples were taken from the chimney and areas within combustible waste incinerators, as well as from the vent of WEEE sorting facility. The WEEE vent had the highest Sb concentration (from <100 to 2200 ng m(-3)), which were orders of magnitude higher than the air surrounding the combustible shredder (from 25 to 217 ng m(-3)), and the incinerator chimney (from <30 to 100 ng m(-3)). From these results, it seems evident that Sb from waste is not an environmental concern in Norway, and that Sb is mostly readily recovered from plastic and bottom ash.

Antimony in soils of SW Poland—an overview of potentially enriched sites

“…The diversity of Sb concentrations in landfill-affected soils can be ascribed to various properties of wastes. It should be stressed that the maximum values recorded in this study from such soils are considerably lower than those found in the surroundings of landfills where electronic wastes, plastics, and batteries were deposited (Gutiérrez- Gutiérrez et al 2015 ; Okkenhaug et al 2015 ; Mykolenko et al 2018 ). On the other hand, however, the wastes dumped in well-protected disposal sites should not influence their surroundings.…”

“…Hu et al ( 2015 ) found 9000 mg kg −1 Sb in the top soils of brake pad dumpsite located in Miyun County in China. Okkenhaug et al ( 2015 ) stressed that very high Sb concentrations can be present in waste electrical and electronic equipment, in vehicle plastic (1238–1715 mg kg −1 ), and in vehicle fluff (34–4565 mg kg −1 ). Although the latter data refer to solid wastes, and not to soils, high potential risk posed on the environment by the wastes rich in Sb disposed in the landfills cannot be ignored.…”

Black manganese-rich crusts on a Gothic cathedral

“…The agreement of the main inorganic particulate matter released by vehicles and the main enrichments of elements within the crusts suggests that vehicle emissions are indeed good candidates for the sources of the Mn, Ba, Pb, and Zn observed on the Freiburger Münster. Antimony would be another element providing information about the source of the elements (Iijima et al, 2008;Okkenhaug et al, 2015), and should be measured additionally in future studies.…”

Effects of leachates from UV-weathered microplastic on the microalgae Scenedesmus vacuolatus

“…Following the OECD No. 201 test guideline [18], we addressed potential impairment of algal growth and a key physiological process, namely photosynthesis, in one test assay. Microalgae were chosen as suitable test organisms since we could ensure the test accuracy of cell-based tools but with increased biological complexity in comparison to our previously used test systems [17] by using a population-based test.…”