than smectite; therefore the difference in mineral 

 composition between the rivers could easily ac- 

 count for the differences observed in the marine 

 sediments with respect to mercury. 



In summary, the concentration of mercury in 

 plankton, snow, river and ocean water, and sedi- 

 ments has been determined. These values will 

 serve as baseline by which comparisons may be 

 made at some future date to determine the influ- 

 ence of man's activities upon the concentration of 

 this element in the North Slope environment. 



REFERENCES 



Weiss, H. v., M. Koide and E. D. Goldberg. 1972. Mer- 

 cury in a Greenland ice sheet; Evidence of recent input 

 by man. Science 174: 692—694. 



Weiss, H. V. and T. E. Crozier. 1972. The determination 

 of mercury in seawater by radioactivation. Anal. Chim. 

 Acta. 58: 231—233. 



SjtSstrand, B. 1964. Simultaneous determination of mer- 

 cury and arsenic in biological material by activation 

 analysis. Anal. Chem. 36: 814—819. 



Covell. D. F. 1959. Determination of gamma-ray abun- 

 dance directly from the total absorption peak. Anal. 

 Chem. 31: 1785—1790. 



Williams, P. M. and H. V. Weiss. 1973. Mercury in the 

 marine environment: Concentration in seawater and in a 

 pelagic food chain. J. Fisheries Res. Board Canada 30: 

 293—295. 



Aidin'yan, N. KH andG.A. Belavskaya. 1963. Supergene 

 transfer of mercury. Trudy Inst. Geoli. Rudn. Mes- 

 torozhd. Petrog. Minearalog. i. Geokhim. 99: 12 — 15. 



Dall'Aglio, M. 1968. The abundance of mercury in 300 

 natural water samples from Tuscany and Latrium in 

 Ahrens, L. H. ed. Orgin and distribution of the ele- 

 ments. A symposium, Paris 1967: New York Pergamon 

 Press, p. 1065—1081. 



Burton, J. D. andT. M. Leatherland. 1971. The noncentra- 

 tion of mercury in the English Channel. Nature. 231: 

 440. 



Weiss, H. v., S. Yamamoto, T. E. Crozier and J. H. 

 Mathewson. 1972. Mercury: Vertical Distribution at two 

 locations in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Env. 

 Sci. Tech. 6: 645. 



234 



