D. Kirk Nordstrom (Former Employee)

The largest mass poisoning in the world, perhaps in history, is happening in West Bengal, India, and Bangladesh. Many thousands of people suffer from arsenic skin disorders and are dying from cancer. About 19 million are estimated to be at risk. The discovery of the arsenic poisoning from tubewell drinking water was made in 1983, but it took about 10 years to be formally recognized as a...

The effect of simultaneous competitive speciation of dissolved rare earth elements (REEs) in acidic waters (pH 3.3 to 5.2) has been evaluated by applying the PHREEQE code to the speciation of water analyses from Spain, Brazil, USA, and Canada. The main ions that might affect REE are Al3+, F-, SO42-, and PO43-. Fluoride, normally a significant complexer of REEs, is strongly associated...

Recent research by the U.S. Geological Survey has characterized contaminant sources and identified important geochemical processes that influence transport of radionuclides from uranium mining and milling wastes. 1) Selective extraction studies indicated that alkaline earth sulfates and hydrous ferric oxides are important hosts of 226Ra in uranium mill tailings. The action of sulfate...

Cinder Pool is an acid-sulfate-chloride boiling spring in Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park. The pool is unique in that its surface is partially covered with mm-size, black, hollow sulfur spherules, while a layer of molten sulfur resides at the bottom of the pool (18 m depth). The sulfur speciation in the pool was determined on four different days over a period of two years...

Extremely acidic mine waters with pH values as low as -3.6, total dissolved metal concentrations as high as 200 g/L, and sulfate concentrations as high as 760 g/L, have been encountered underground in the Richmond Mine at Iron Mountain, CA. These are the most acidic waters known. The pH measurements were obtained by using the Pitzer method to define pH for calibration of glass membrane...

Brimstone Basin, in southeastern Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming is an ancient hydrothermal area containing solfataric alteration. Drainage waters flowing from Brimstone Basin had pH values as low as 1.23 and contained up to 1.7×106 MPN/ml acidophilic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria. Thiobacillus thiooxidans was the dominant sulfur-oxidizing bacterium recovered from an enrichment culture...