Reducing risk and increasing confidence of decision making at a lower cost: In-situ pXRF assessment of metal-contaminated sites

This study evaluates the in-situ use of field portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) for metal-contaminated site assessments, and assesses the advantages of increased sampling to reduce risk, and increase confidence of decision making at a lower cost. Five metal-contaminated sites were assessed using both in-situ pXRF and ex-situ inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP–MS) analyses at various sampling resolutions. Twenty second in-situ pXRF measurements of Mn, Zn and Pb were corrected using a subset of parallel ICP–MS measurements taken at each site. Field and analytical duplicates revealed sampling as the major contributor (>95% variation) to measurement uncertainties. This study shows that increased sampling led to several benefits including more representative site characterisation, higher soil-metal mapping resolution, reduced uncertainty around the site mean, and reduced sampling uncertainty. Real time pXRF data enabled efficient, on-site decision making for further judgemental sampling, without the need to return to the site. Additionally, in-situ pXRF was more cost effective than the current approach of ex-situ sampling and ICP–MS analysis, even with higher sampling at each site. Lastly, a probabilistic site assessment approach was applied to demonstrate the advantages of integrating estimated measurement uncertainties into site reporting. [Display omitted] •Metal-contaminated sites were assessed using in-situ pXRF and ICP-MS methods.•20 s in-situ pXRF measurements were corrected using parallel ICP-MS data.•Sampling contributed >95% error towards overall measurement uncertainties.•Real-time pXRF data enabled efficient judgemental sampling of contaminated hotspots.•Increased sampling by pXRF lowers the risk of site misclassification. Corrected in-situ pXRF data accurately and efficiently characterised metal contaminated sites, which allowed for greater sampling of sites at a lower cost than current standard practices.