Determination of Isotope Ratio of Plumbum Pollution Source in Birmingham Urban Soils

In this paper, a method for determining the isotope ratio was developed to analyze the lead pollution source in the soil of Birmingham. The surface soil and urban environmental pollution (coal combustion dust, automobile exhaust dust, construction dust) in Birmingham were collected as samples. AANALYST800 atomic absorption spectrometer was used to determine the content of Plumbum (Pb) element, and HR-ICP-MS high-resolution inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer was used to determine the content of Pb elements. The granularity was analyzed by a courter laser particle size analyzer. Results showed that the average mass fraction of Pb in the surface soil of Birmingham is 43.91 × 10 −6 mg·kg −1 , which is 2.3 times the background value (19.06 × 10 –6 ). The ratios of 208Pb/207Pb and 206Pb/207Pb were obtained 3.36–3.58 and 2.27–2.32, respectively, in the soil of Birmingham. Therefore, the proposed method can research the lead pollution source in British urban soil by analyzing the mass fraction of lead in Birmingham soil, the features of lead isotopes of end-members, the vertical distribution of Pb, the enrichment factors and the fingerprint effect of lead isotopes.