W7 PM Metals in the Environment: Regulatory and Risk Concerns
Wednesday, 16 November 2005: 1:50 PM - 5:30 PM in 327-329

(STR-1117-823075) Environmental regulations of tungsten pollution in the former USSR.

Strigul, Nikolay¹, ¹ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

ABSTRACT- Tungsten is a heavy metal with many industrial and military applications. Currently, there are no environmental regulations in place in the United States and the European Union addressing tungsten pollution, and published data concerning environmental effects of tungsten are scarce. In the USSR since 1950, the toxicological and environmental effects of tungsten were investigated, including tungsten concentrations in natural and contaminated soils and water reservoirs; tungsten uptake by plants; and tungsten toxicity. Environmental regulations of tungsten pollution were then developed based on these studies: tungsten was assigned to the 3rd toxicity group (moderate dangerous chemical compounds) for air in the populated areas and soil, and to the 2nd toxicity group (higher dangerous chemical compounds) for water reservoirs. Other pollutants in these categories include, for example, strontium and manganese (3rd group for soil), and cadmium and lead (2nd group for water). Maximum allowable concentrations (MAC) in environmental systems were set for Tungsten across the USSR, which have remained in placed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. These are 0.05 mg/l for drinking and practical using water reservoirs, 0.0008 mg/1 for fishing water reservoirs, and 0.15 mg/m3 for air in the populated areas. This work appears to have escaped the attention of the international scientific community, probably due to a combination of the language barrier, and the limited availability of the publications, many of which have not been reviewed in scientific publication databases. This presentation will give a comprehensive review of the scientific results relevant to tungsten fate and transport in environmental systems published in the former USSR, and more recent studies conducted in independent republics, including soil pollution and plant uptake, human and environmental toxicology, geochemistry, and environmental regulations.

Key words: tungsten pollution, environmental regulations, fate and transport