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A new method to radiolabel natural organic matter by chemical reduction with tritiated sodium borohydride.

In this paper, we describe a new method for labeling NOM with the radioisotope tritium (3H) using fulvic acid (FA) as the target NOM fraction. During labeling, FA ketone groups are chemically reduced with tritiated sodium borohydride (NaBH4), while the chemical functionality of the carboxyl and phenol groups is preserved. The labeling procedure was optimized in efficiency experiments that determined the excess concentration of tritiated NaBH4 required for optimum reduction conditions. The chemical characterization of the labeled FA product using FTIR and 1H NMR spectral analysis confirms the proposed reaction mechanism and rules out any significant amounts of impurities or undesirable side reactions. Results from size exclusion chromatography indicate thatthe tritium label is distributed uniformly over the whole molecular size range of FA and that it is stable over time and under various pH conditions. Potential differences in FA sorption behavior onto mineral surfaces due to labeling were excluded based on experimental data. This method produces NOM of high specific activity (e.g., 1.9 mCi mg(-1) FA); this permits the tracing of FA at a detection limit of 0.3 microg L(-1) FA.