Humic acids in marine sediments: an extraction procedure for the determination of the complexed metals

Abstract

The optimization of the extraction of metal–humic acid complexes from marine sediments has been studied. A well known procedure of extraction has been considered and a modification is proposed in order to extract the less stable metal–humate species. Humic acid extracted from marine sediments collected in Antarctica has been quantified by a spectrophotometric method, while five trace metals extracted together with the humic acids have been measured by ICP–AES.