Abstract
The FLAME (FLy-Ash and Metals in Europe: Implications for human and environmental health) research project funded by the EU COPERNICUS programme ran from 1994 to 1996. The main aims of the programme were to further develop an automated chemical characterisation to discriminate between fly-ash particles from the major fossil-fuels used throughout Europe (coal, oil, pear, brown coal and oil shale) and apply this to particles extracted from lake sediments taken from the four participating countries (Estonia, Czech Republic, Ireland and U.K.) in order to determine spatial distributions of deposited particulates from large combustion sources.
In combination with trace metal analyses from lake surface sediments and catchment mosses, the fly-ash particle data were able to identify areas of elevated pollutant deposition and suggest potential sources for them. Given the transboundary nature of the pollutants, the techniques and results of FLAME are of relevance throughout Europe.
Other papers in this volume describe results and interpretation. This paper describes the background and aims of the FLAME project, outlines the methods employed for sampling sediments and mosses and the analytical techniques for particle enumeration and trace metal analysis for sediments and mosses.
Finally brief details of the particle characterisation are given showing how a hierarchical discriminant function was developed, based on energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) derived particle chemistry which correctly allocated particles from the five fuel-types with 80% accuracy.