Aplicación de nuevas tecnologías para la detección de contaminantes en el medio marino

Resumen

One of the most challenging environmental issues in pollution in- cidents is to quickly obtain analytical data in order to evaluate pos- sible mitigation, remedial, and compensatory measures to manage the negative impact on a specific area. Thus, predictive or screen- ing tools are gaining importance because they are able to esti- mate the quality or contamination levels of certain environmental scenarios in short periods of time, for example, in environmental monitoring plans for coastal systems, riverbeds, and so on. The aim of the present study is to apply the novel technique in the process of monitoring coastal and estuarine sediments. For this purpose the first objective of the present study was to assess the applicability of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), ATR-FTIR spec- troscopy and the hyphenated technique TGA–FTIR as alternative tools for simultaneous screening of the physico-chemical analysis and pollution levels in marine sediments. The results of this study has confirmed that these methods offers a series of advantages over other standard methods of analysis such since, it allows mon- itoring of an area with low costs, reduced time requirements and with little equipment.