G46 



DATA OF GEOCHEMISTRY 



an amount of arsenic detectable with a method sensitive 

 to 1 ppb. 



Sugawara, Tanaka, and Kanamori (1956) feel that 

 the older methods for arsenic were unreliable, being sub- 

 ject to contamination, particularly from glassware, and 

 it is possible that the development of more accurate 

 methods will show the present figures to be too high. 

 For the time being, however, it seems that arsenic con- 

 centrations of several parts per billion are to be expected 

 in ordinary dilute waters, and that concentrations of 1 

 ppm or more may be encountered in some concentrated 

 waters or in hydrothermal areas. 



Antimony contents of as much as 40 ppb were found 

 by Braidech and Emery (1935) in their spectrographic 

 examination of United States water supplies. This 

 seems rather high, and may reflect contamination from 

 the pipes used to cany the water to the points where 

 samples were taken for analysis. If such a quantity 

 of antimony is actually to be foimd in natural waters, 

 it should be of some biogeochemical importance, and 

 the subject might repay further investigation. 



Grazhdan (1957) lists bismuth among the elements 

 detected in several mineral waters of Turkmenistan. 

 There do not appear to be any quantitative data for 

 this element. 



TEDS RARE GASES 



Of the rare gases only argon has been investigated 

 seriously in lake or river water. Sugawara and 

 Tochikubo (1955) provide data for the argon content 

 of five water samples from three lakes in Japan, and 

 these are presented in table 88. The authors attribute 

 the supersaturation of hypolimnetic water to heating of 

 the deep water in situ without mixing. This sugges- 

 tion has been rejected by Hutchinson (1957), who has, 

 however, no alternative explanation to offer. If there 

 is a substantial ground-water flow into the lakes, they 

 may receive their excess argon in this way, for Sugawara 

 and Tochikubo found that ground waters were fre- 

 quently supersaturated, apparently as a result of 

 bubbles of air being carried in the ground water to a 

 depth at which there is appreciable solution, but such 

 massive ground-water flow seems even less likely than 

 heating in situ. The question is relevant to the prob- 

 lems of gas exchange in the swim bladders of deep- 

 water fishes and should be investigated in a variety of 

 lakes. Apparently Oana (1957) did not find appre- 

 ciable supersaturation. In river waters the argon con- 

 centration is presumably close to saturation at atmos- 

 pheric pressure, except in very torrential streams where 

 it might approach saturation at the ambient pressure. 



There appears to be some further information about 

 the rare gases in a paper by Dzens-Litovskii (1939), but 

 the abstract available states only that the gases coming 



off the Sultan-Sanzhar Lake are 5.7 percent methane, 

 91.8 percent nitrogen and rare gases, and 1.023 percent 

 krypton, xenon, and heavy gases. 



Table 88. — Argon content of lake water 

 [After Sugawara and Toehikuko (1955)] 



With the current ready availability of gas frac- 

 tometers and mass spectrographs it should be relatively 

 easy to make substantial additions to current knowledge 

 of the rare gases in water. 



GALLIUM 



Gallium has been recorded once from lake water, by 

 Hutchinson (1944) who concluded from a spectro- 

 graphic analysis that between 0.1 and 1 ppb was 

 present in the water of Linsley Pond. 



GOLD 



Hydrochemical prospecting has occasionally been 

 used in an effort to detect commercial deposits of gold, 

 but apparently not with very great success, Kro- 

 pachev (1935) says that it is useless to seek gold in 

 regions where the waters contain less than 0.06 ppb of 

 the element. Konovalov (1941) says that the gold 

 content of river water is variable and is a poor indicator 

 of the gold content of rocks. Additional information on 

 the gold content of water is apparently given by Zverev, 

 Levchenko, and Miller (1947), but it has not been 

 possible to locate this paper or an informative abstract 

 of it. 



MERCURY 



Mercury appears to have been determined in river 

 water only by Heide, Lerz, and Bohm (1957), who found 

 that the Saale at Goscwitz had an annual mean con- 

 centration of 0.066 ppb in solution and an additional 

 0.021 ppb in the suspended form. Other stations on 

 the same river had corresponding contents ranging 

 from 0.035 to 0.145 ppb and from 0.004 to 0.046 ppb. 

 The ratio of mercury to lead in river water was very 

 similar to that in igneous and sedimentary rocks and in 

 mollusk shells, but in sea water mercury was relatively 

 about 10 times as abundant, whereas, rainwater, with 

 0.0002 ppb of mercury, had no detectable lead. Ap- 

 parently mercury, because of its volatility, cycles quite 

 readily through the atmosphere. 



