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Factors affecting arsenic concentration in groundwaters from Northwestern Chaco-Pampean Plain, Argentina

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Environmental Geology

Abstract

The concentration of arsenic measured in groundwater from three aquifers in the study area located in the Eastern Tucuman province, Argentina, mostly depends on the lithology, but the spatial and temporal variations of concentrations seem to be also controlled by pH changes, climatic factors, and human perturbations. The highest concentrations of As (more than 1,000 μg L−1) were found in the shallow aquifer, made of As-rich loess, while the lowest concentrations were measured in the deep confined aquifer, consisting of alternating layers of alluvial sands/gravels and clays. Intermediate values were measured in the semiconfined aquifer made of the fluvial sediments deposited in the Salí River valley, that alternate in the upper part of the sedimentary sequence with layers of loess. Because most of As in the loess is considered to be adsorbed onto Fe-oxyhydroxide coatings, the increase of pH in the flow direction (west-east) leads to increasing arsenic concentrations towards the eastern border of the study area. The decomposition of organic wastes poured into the Salí River or associated with local and diffuse sources of contamination in the eastern part of the study area depletes dissolved oxygen, which leads to the reductive dissolution of Fe and Mn oxyhydroxides, and to the subsequent release of the adsorbed and co-precipitated As. This process mainly affects shallow groundwater and the upper part of the semiconfined aquifer. Geochemical and hydrological data also suggest that rising water table levels at the end of the wet season may also lead to reductive dissolution of As-rich Fe oxyhydroxides in the shallow aquifer.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by CIUNT (project 26/G211). María Gabriela García is a member of the Argentinean CONICET. One of authors (Ondra Sracek) was partly supported by the grant MSM0021622412 of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport. We thank Dr. Prosun Bhattacharya for comments which helped to improve an early version of this manuscript and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigaciones Geoquímicas y de Procesos de la Superficie. FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Av. Vélez Sarsfield 1611, X5016CGA, Córdoba, Argentina

    María Gabriela García

  2. Institute of Geological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlářská 2, 611 37, Brno, Czech Republic

    Ondra Sracek

  3. Servicio Geológico Minero Argentino, Delegación Tucumán, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina

    Diego Sebastián Fernández

  4. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia en Química Aplicada. FCN e IML, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina

    Margarita del Valle Hidalgo

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  1. María Gabriela García
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  2. Ondra Sracek
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  3. Diego Sebastián Fernández
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  4. Margarita del Valle Hidalgo
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Correspondence to María Gabriela García.

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García, M.G., Sracek, O., Fernández, D.S. et al. Factors affecting arsenic concentration in groundwaters from Northwestern Chaco-Pampean Plain, Argentina. Environ Geol 52, 1261–1275 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-006-0564-y

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