Determinación de metales pesados en muestras de agua de la microcuenca El Carmen mediante espectroscopia de emisión óptica con plasma acoplado inductivamente

Abstract

Abstract: River pollution iscaused by the presence of compounds or elements that would not normally exist without human intervention, or by an increase or decrease in the normal concentration of substances already present due to this action. Metals are very important elements for the human body to carry out its vital functions, but in excessive concentrations they can cause damage to health. Therefore, the present work was developed with the objective of determining and characterizing the level of heavy metals in water samples from the El Carmen microwatershedby means of inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES).10 points along the microwatershedwere analyzed for 7 elements (Al, Ni, Cr, Cd, Fe, Zn and Cu). With the results obtaineds, it was determined that there are metals such as: aluminum (Al) and nickel (Ni) with high concentrations, which exceed the maximum limits established by the NTE INEN 1108 standard, while for chromium (Cr), iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn), the concentrations are very low and do not exceed the maximum limits established by the standard. The analysis was also performed for cadmium (Cd) and copper (Cu), whose values are below the detection limits.