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Sources of carbon isotopes in Baltic Sea sediments

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Abstract

Radiocarbon and specific phospholipid-derived biomarkers were used to trace chemical warfare agents (CWA) at the Gotland Deep dumping site of chemical weapons. Δ14C measurements in different classes of organic fractions, such as total lipid extracts (TLE), humic acids (HA) and phospholipid-derived fatty acids (PLFA) isolated from bottom sediments have been applied. In addition, specific PLFA biomarkers extracted from sediments were analyzed by gas chromatography. Contrary to Δ14CHA, the most depleted Δ14CTOC and Δ14CTLE values were found in bottom sediments samples collected at the CWA dumpsite, which were attributed to different carbon sources.

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Acknowledgements

The Financial support provided by the Research Council of Lithuania (Contract No. MIP-080/2012) is acknowledged. Authors thank students of the Chemical Department of the Vilnius University for their technical assistance. We are grateful for funding support to H-C Li for the AMS 14C measurements from NSC 102-2811-M-002-177 and MOST 103-2116-M-002-001 of Taiwan. PPP acknowledges support provided by the EU Research and Development Operational Program funded by the ERDF (Project No. 26240220004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SRI Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Galina Lujanienė, Sergej Šemčuk & Nijolė Remeikaitė-Nikienė

  2. NTUAMS Laboratory at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Hong-Chun Li

  3. SRI Nature Research Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Kęstutis Jokšas

  4. Environmental Protection Agency, Klaipeda, Lithuania

    Nijolė Remeikaitė-Nikienė

  5. Marine Research Institute, Klaipeda, Lithuania

    Vitalijus Stirbys, Galina Garnaga-Budrė & Algirdas Stankevičius

  6. Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Pavel P. Povinec

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  1. Galina Lujanienė
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Correspondence to Galina Lujanienė.

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Lujanienė, G., Li, HC., Jokšas, K. et al. Sources of carbon isotopes in Baltic Sea sediments. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 322, 1461–1467 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-019-06834-w

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