PORE WATER SAMPLING METHOD FOR SULFIDE MEASURING IN SEDIMENT

The concentration of sulfide contained in the bottom sediment is a crucial indicator of environmental pollution in enclosed coastal seas. Acid-volatile sulfide (AVS) is widely used as an index of sulfide concentration in Japan. However, AVS contains a large amount of sparingly soluble bound sulfides that have little effect on living organisms. Therefore, its accuracy as an environmental index for evaluating the effect on living organisms is considered low. However, there are few measurement examples of dissolved sulfide (hereafter abbreviated as DS) because it is difficult to collect and analyze many samples in a short time. We devised a method to easily collect pore water from sediments and analyze the DS contained in pore water. The accuracy of this analysis method was examined and it was confirmed that sufficiently practical measured values could be obtained. By comparing DS with conventional AVS at the survey site of Hakata Wan enclosed coastal sea using this method, it was found that the DS concentration is a highly independent index different from AVS and is an effective index for evaluating environmental pollution.