Teledyne Leeman Labs Blog

This is part three of the Onondaga Lake story. In part two, we outlined what happened once rescue efforts started in the 1970s with new laws and standards that helped to drive change in and around the lake. In this post, we want to focus on what happened after Onondaga Lake was declared a Superfund site in December 1994, and after the signing of an historic agreement in 1998 among the county and various government entities that helped reduce phosphorus and ammonium discharges from the city’s waste treatment plant. It was shortly after this agreement that the water quality started to improve, giving the community a reason for optimism.

This is part two of the Onondaga Lake story, one of prosperity, pollution and revival.  In part one, we documented the collapse of the lake, detailing the years of pollution from the municipal sewage plant and surrounding factories. In this post, we will focus on what happened once rescue efforts started in the 1970s until the 21^st century.

As we described in part one of this story, in the 1800s, Onondaga Lake was home to resorts, amusement parks and beaches. Over time, the lake became a dumping ground for waste. One of the company’s along the lake produced soda ash beginning in 1884. “Roughly 6 million pounds of salty wastes, made up of chloride, sodium and calcium were discharged daily to Onondaga Lake from the soda ash facility before it closed in 1986.”[i] And from 1946 to 190, experts estimate roughly 165,000 pounds of mercury were also dumped in the lake.

This is part one of the story about Onondaga Lake, considered at one time to be the most polluted lake in the United States. 

In early November 2014, Honeywell finished the dredging of Onondaga Lake, moving the lake one step closer back to a natural resource that can be used and enjoyed by the surrounding community. The lake in central New York covers more than 4.6 square miles, is one mile wide and 4.6 miles long.  The early story of Onondaga Lake is one of prosperity and growth, turned to abuse and pollution. Once considered a public treasure with popular beaches, resorts and amusement parks, the lake fell victim to industrial development and the impact of a surging population.

The instruments being marketed today have reached a level of sophistication that would not have seemed possible 40 years ago. Though the fundamental principles of the technique have not changed, the technology has seen significant advancements, especially in the design of the ICP source, optical spectrometer and detection systems. Simultaneously, milestones in real-time elemental coverage, sample throughput and ease-of-use, continue to make it easier to reach new pinnacles in productivity and data quality.

With the 1970s known as the birth of ICP-OES and the 1980s as the era of versatility, the decade of the 1990s was the dawn of some major breakthroughs in ICP optical spectrometry.  These breakthroughs centered on the Plasma orientation and solid state Detectors, which initiated hopes of simultaneous detection of the entire ICP spectrum. 

In part I of the Evolution of ICP, we focused on the first decade of ICP instruments, which were based on the Paschen-Rünge optical design. In part II of the blog series, we jump into the 1980s, and the next era in innovation.

The wavelength restrictions associated with the Paschen-Rünge optical design led to the development of sequential spectrometers in the early 1980s.  Most of these instruments relied on the principle of scanning a dispersive optic (typically a ruled or holographic diffraction grating) to select the specific wavelength of light corresponding to the element of interest. These instruments were extremely versatile, possessing the ability to access nearly any wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum from 160 - 900 nm.  Their downside lay in their ability to access only one wavelength at a time (thus named sequential), resulting in slow analysis times. On an instrument of this type, a typical analysis could take several minutes to cover the 10 to 20 elements of interest. A schematic diagram of a typical scanning sequential spectrometer is shown in the schematic below:

Since its commercial inception in 1974, ICP-OES has seen significant technological advancements over its 39-year lifespan.  In this four-part blog series, we will summarize the evolution of ICP-OES technology and show how it has come to be applied to an ever-growing amount of sample types and elements of interest, as it has matured.  Each blog post will cover the significant milestones that have occurred in ICP-OES through the past four decades.  Because the ICP-OES specialization is very much a language of its own, useful terminology will appear in bold and will be defined in an upcoming downloadable glossary of ICP-OES Terms and Definitions.

A report by the United States Geological Survey has taken an in-depth look at the level of mercury contamination in America’s streams. The national assessment, Mercury in the Nation’s Streams—Levels, Trends, and Implications, has found unhealthy mercury levels in 25 percent of streams with the highest concentrations in the southeast and the west. The contamination in these regions is attributed in part to the degradation caused by historic mining activities.

The Gold Rush Part V: Sources of Mercury

Part four of our mercury blog series covered the effects of mercury exposure on humans. In the final part of our series, we will focus on the sources of mercury, and briefly highlight the existing regulation designed to stop mercury from damaging the environment, wildlife ecosystems, and human lives.