Data for: Determination and source apportionment of major and trace elements in atmospheric bulk deposition in a Caribbean rural area

Description

Samples of bulk atmospheric deposition (wet + dry) collected between March, 2014 and November, 2016 through the RNVRA (Environmental Radiological Surveillance Network, established in Cuba in 1990) at the Environmental Study Centre Facilities (CEAC) located in Cienfuegos (Cuba) were used to determine the atmospheric fluxes of major and trace elements. Bulk deposition samples were collected using five bulk rain collectors (50 L polyethylene) with a total surface area of 1.25 m2. The collectors were installed on a small building roof (about 5 m above ground) in the CEAC facilities, and acidified prior to deployment with concentrated HCl. After monthly periods the samples were collected rinsing the walls of collectors twice with distilled water and combined all into plastic bottles; then the collectors were acidified and deployed again. The samples were immediately transported to the laboratory where they were evaporated to dryness and weighed (before and after the evaporation) to obtain the mass of total deposited particles. The residual particles were ground to a fine powder and packed in polyethylene vials to conduct the non-destructive radiometric analyses (radioactivity levels measurement) required to support the results of the RNVRA. After that, the samples were stored until the chemical analysis performed in this study. Determination of elements was performed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS, Agilent 7500a), after their acid extraction in closed microwave digestion (CEM Co., Mars X press) adding 0.25 g of sample and 12 ml of aqua regia (HCl/HNO3=3:1). A multi-elemental solution (Li, Sc, Y, In, Bi, Inorganic Ventures 71D) was added to the samples as internal standard for further determination by ICP-MS. A total of 47 elements, including 13 lanthanoid elements (La to Lu), were simultaneously quantified in all samples. The quality control of the analytical procedures was carried out by repeated analysis of the standard reference materials (SRM) CTA-FFA1 (fine fly ash). The recovery of major and trace elements was generally within the range of 70–110%, and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 12%. In the case of lanthanoid elements the obtained recoveries were lower (63 – 85%) but similar to those usually reported in the literature. The monthly atmospheric fluxes (F, in g m-2 day-1) for the studied elements were calculated as follows: F=(C*m)/(S*T) (1) where: C is the measured concentration (in g g-1), m is the total deposited dry mass (in g), S is the total surface area of the collectors (in m2) and T is the duration of the sampling period (in days). The atmospheric bulk deposition rate (g m-2 day-1, hereinafter bulk deposition) was calculated by the same formula (Eq. 1) without the parameter C.

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