Isotopic Tools for Tracing Water Pollutants

In geochemistry, isotopes, trace elements, and noble gases are frequently used to learn more about subsurface water circulation and chemical processes. Improved understanding of solute transport and water pollutants in complicated systems is made possible by isotopic methods. This chapter provides a review of water pollutants, isotopic methods, and natural tracers. As a result of human activity, marine pollution is fast expanding into a global environmental disaster. There is mounting evidence that the unregulated release of untreated industrial effluent and municipal wastewater has negative consequences for marine ecosystems, animal life, and human access to coastal areas. As a result, the best way to manage marine pollution is to conduct regular monitoring of the coastal marine environment to learn more about its source, distribution, fate, and behavior. Water and marine coastal pollution can be measured using both conventional and cutting-edge isotopic techniques. Isotope analysis can be used as an engineering tool to characterize pollutants and to trace their contributions from various sources within the mixing zones of estuaries, coastal water, and shelf water.