Speciation Transformation and Behavior of Arsenic in Soils Under Anoxic Conditions

The soil of 0-100 cm depth was collected from the wastewater-irrigated farmland in Zhangshi,Shenyang and was amended with low concentration of arsenic.Microbial-mediated speciation transformation and environmental behavior of arsenic were investigated with and without addition of sulfate.The results showed that without addition of sulfate,arsenate was significantly reduced and released into soil solution after eight days of anaerobic incubation.Above 70% of arsenic presented as arsenite.More arsenic was released from the soil of 20-40 cm depth with arsenite and total arsenicconcentration of 892.8 μg·L-1 and 1 240.6 μg·L-1 respectively.Compared with abiotic control,the amount of arsenic dissolved in hydrochloric acid decreased greatly in each layer of soil,moreover,almost all of arsenic was reduced to arsenite.Ferric iron was also significantly reduced to ferrous and released into soil solution simultaneously.The concentration of ferrous iron in soil solution was above 40 mg·L-1 in solution and was 9.0-13.4 g·kg-1 in soil solid.Above 50% of the iron dissolved in hydrochloric acid was presented as ferrous.This indicates that microbial reduction leads to reductive dissolution of iron oxides and transformation of mineral configuration in soil solid.The release of arsenic and iron was notably suppressed after addition of 10 mmol·L-1 sulfate,with the concentration reduced by 50%.The amount of HCl-dissolvable arsenic in soil solid decreased by 50%,compared to the treatment without sulfate addition,which probably due to precipitation of arsenic sulfide.It is obvious that microbial reduction leads to reduction and release of arsenic when sulfate is absent.In the presence of sulfate,microbes may transform mobile arsenic into more stable species.Formation of arsenic sulfide mineral was probably the mechanism for arsenic fixation in soil by microbes.