Coal- and oil-fired power plants are responsible for an inordinate amount of the toxic pollutants present in our atmosphere. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they can generate mercury emissions exceeding 53 tonnes per year, representing 50% of all mercury air pollution in the country. Mercury and air toxins are extremely damaging to human health and to our environment, hence the importance of the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS) rule implemented by the EPA. But stricter regulations on pollution control must be accompanied by improvements to standardised environmental screening and analysis.
NIST-traceable mercury standards fit the bill when it comes to inorganic trace analysis of pollutants via inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES).
Using Mercury Standards in Trace Elemental Analysis
ICP-AES is a powerful tool for trace-level elemental analysis that has only been implemented