CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF RIVERS AND LAKES 



(14!) 



Some further information about the zinc content of 

 waters maj 7 be obtained from the geochemical prospect- 

 ing papers of Kauranne and of Boyle and his co-workers 

 to which reference already has been made. 



TITANIUM 



By far the largest body of information about the 

 titanium content of lakes and rivers is that provided by 

 Kleinkopf (1955, 1960), who found between 0.05 and 

 27.5 ppb in 440 lake waters of Maine with a mean value 

 of 1.60 ppb. Braidech and Emery (1935) found at 

 least a trace in half of the public water supplies thej T 

 investigated. Untreated water from Lake Michigan, 

 with a content of 70 ppb contained the most, but 

 samples from five other localities contained 20 ppb. 

 Hutchinson (1941) found 50 ppb of titanium in hy- 

 polimnetic water from Linsley Pond. Thirty-three 

 samples from major rivers of North America had a 

 mean titanium content of 13.2 ppb (W. H. Durum, 

 written communication, 1960). Nothing is known 

 about the state of the titanium measured by any of 

 these investigators, and it is at least possible that the 

 titanium was all in suspension. 



ZIRCONIUM 



Zirconium appears to have been detected in lake 

 waters only by Kleinkopf (1955, 1960) who found it to 

 be uniformly present in 440 lake waters of Maine, with 

 a range from 0.05 to 22.5 ppb and a mean of 2.61 ppb. 



TIN 



The tin content of waters has been studied by 

 Braidech and Emery (1935), who found contents as 

 high as 100 ppb with a mean of 17 ppb in 24 water 

 samples. Water from Lake Michigan, the only un- 

 treated surface water included in their study, contained 

 40 ppb. Kleinkopf (1955, 1960), working with 419 

 lake waters of Maine, found much less tin. The range 

 in the tin content in the lake waters of Maine was only 

 as high as 2.50 ppb and the mean was 0.038 ppb. 

 These figures are so discordant as to suggest analytical 

 error in one of the investigations. 



LEAD 



The most valuable set of data for the lead content of 

 lake and river water is that of Kleinkopf (1955, 1960), 

 who found between 0.03 and 115.0 ppb of the element 

 in 440 lakes of Maine. The mean was 2.30. Thirty- 

 three samples of water from major rivers in North 

 America contained an average of 6.6 ppb of lead 

 (W.H. Durum, written communication, 1960). Dataof 

 Braidech and Emery (1935) are open to question because 

 of possible contamination from the pipes of the water 

 systems from which they obtained their samples, but 

 their finding of 2 ppb in water from Lake Michigan is 

 concordant with the results of Kleinkopf, although 



their mean of 26 ppb for the entire series of 24 water 

 supplies seems suspiciously high. Eighteen of 536 

 waters of California (Calif. Dept. Water Resources, 

 1957) contained between 5 and 20 ppb of detectable 

 lead. The mean for the entire series was 0.3 ppb. 



Lead was among the heavy metals studied by Boyle 

 and his co-workers in the papers to which reference 

 has already been made. Newton (1944) has presented 

 some additional data on the high lead content of rivers 

 polluted by mine wastes. 



From the data available it seems likely that the 

 global mean lead content for lakes and rivers lies be- 

 tween 1 and 10 ppb. 



VANADIUM 



The first analysis of vanadium in lake or river water 

 appears to be that of Braidech and Emery (1935) who 

 found 20 ppb in water from Lake Michigan and failed 

 to detect it in any other of the 24 waters they examined. 

 Bertrand (1950), reviewing the biogeochemistry of the 

 element, was able to cite several analyses for springs 

 but none for lakes and rivers. Paraje (1950), studying 

 28 water supplies in the southern part of Cordoba, 

 Argentina, found as much as 1,400 ppb with a mean of 

 320 ppb, but he did not specify the sources of the water 

 supplies and it is likely that most, if not all, were ground 

 waters. In addition, the region is geochemically 

 unusual, being extremely arid and characterized 

 especially by high arsenic concentrations, and is 

 unlikely to have a vanadium content that is typical of 

 ordinary lake and river waters. 



The most important study of vanadium in lakes and 

 rivers is that of Sugawara, Naito, and Yamada (1956). 

 They found a range from 0.1 to 1.0 ppb with a mean of 

 0.91 in 21 samples of river water. SLx samples of rain 

 and snow water gave a range between 0.33 and 2.8 with 

 a mean of 1.10 ppb but some of this meteoric vanadium 

 appeared to be associated with soot from the industrial 

 combustion of coal and petroleum, although it was 

 filterable. Lake sediment also was enriched in vana- 

 dium, though apparently not biologically, for the 

 plankton did not accumulate it. 



Kleinkopf (1955, 1960) found vanadium contents 

 as high as 2.1 ppb and a mean content of 0.112 ppb in 

 440 lake waters of Maine. This is in reasonable agree- 

 ment with the results from Japan, and taken all to- 

 gether, the evidence suggests that the vanadium con- 

 tent of ordinary lake and river waters is somewhat less 

 than 1 ppb. The element is widely and rather uni- 

 formly dispersed. 



CHROMIUM 



Braidech and Emery (1935) detected chromium in 

 22 of the 24 water supplies they studied. The amount 

 ranged as high as 40 ppb with a mean of 5 ppb. Water 

 from Lake Michigan contained 2 ppb. Chromium, 



