Engineering Commons^™

Leaching Of Metals And Metalloids From Highway Marking Glass Beads And The Potential Environmental Impact, Nimrat K. Sandhu

Dissertations

Glass beads are embedded in pavement markings to obtain retroreflectivity which plays a crucial role in the lighting-up effect needed for safe driving. Elevated metal and metalloid concentrations of As, Sb, and Pb have recently been observed in imported glass beads. The main objective of this research was to assess the environmental impact associated with applying these imported glass beads in highway markings. To achieve this objective, total metal concentrations were measured using two techniques: hydrofluoric acid digestion followed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (HF/ICP-MS), and field portable x-ray fluorescence (FP-XRF) spectroscopy. A number of leaching studies were conducted …