An experiment has reinforced the connection between contaminants. Eight years ago, the data was robust but only suggestive, and the evidence was strong but circumstantial. Recently, Karrie Weber and her team at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln have experimentally confirmed that nitrate, a comp
Nitrates are inorganic compounds that play an important role in various biological processes, including the growth and reproduction of plants and the regulation of blood pressure in animals. They are commonly used as fertilizers in agriculture, but can also be found in food and water sources.Eight years ago, the data was robust but only suggestive, and the evidence was strong but circumstantial.
Nebraska’s Karrie Weber directs fellow Husker researchers on how to test for uranium levels in the groundwater near Alda, Nebraska. The team experimentally confirmed that nitrate, a compound common in fertilizers and animal waste, can help transport naturally occurring uranium from the underground to groundwater. Credit: Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute
Their goal? Recreate that flow in the samples of sediment, then determine whether adding some nitrate to the water would increase the amount of uranium that got carried away with it. Later, the team would fill multiple columns with that silt before pumping simulated groundwater through them at roughly the same rate it would have traveled underground. In some cases, that water contained nothing extra. In others, the researchers added nitrate. And in still other cases, they added both nitrate and an inhibitor designed to halt the biochemical activity of microorganisms living in the sediment.
capable of metabolizing nitrate to nitrite. Though that uranium-mobilizing biochemistry had been known to unfold in highly contaminated areas — uranium mines, sites where nuclear waste is processed — Weber said the new study is the first to establish that the same mobilization process also takes place in natural sediment.
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