Heavy metals in the snow and ice cover of the Barents Sea

In September-October 1998, during the expedition of RN Akademik Fedorov (cruise 14) to the Barents Sea, in the region of 82 degrees N between the Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya archipelagos, samples of snow and ice were collected in four test areas. By means of atomic absorption with an electothermal atomizer (onboard the vessel), in filtered (dissolved form) and unfiltered (the sum of dissolved and particulate forms) samples of snow melt and ice, Fe, Mn, Cu, Cr, Ni, Co, Pb, and Cd were determined in order to estimate the level of potential contamination of the snow and ice with these metals. Excluding the data on Ni, Cd (and probably Cu) in the ice, which were regarded to be unsatisfactory because of the probable contamination of the ice samples during the ice layer drilling, the concentrations of all the elements in the snow and ice of the northern part of the Barents Sea appeared to be close to their back-round values or below. An attempt to identify the main sources of the metal supply to the snow from the atmosphere by comparison of the ratios of the metal particulate form to the total content in the snow of the Barents Sea and the same ratios in the snow samples from clean regions of Finland and from contaminated areas of the Kola Peninsula showed that the aerosols in the area of the expedition were supplied into the Barents Sea atmosphere from different sources, both natural and anthropogenic.