THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CORK (BARK) OF QUERCUS SUBER IN THE

Abstract

The recent absence of Lead element as catalyst in internal explosion motors, being an extremely important action for the stop of this environmental aggression, has no effect in the minimization of the harm this element does in the positions where its deposition now lays. The impact of the ubiquity of pollution, in this case Lead pollution, needs to have monitoring tools. The greatest of the tools one can have is the analysis of the content of a strong indicator. One that stands for a long time in one place, for which it is able to receive the marks of the analyte passage. Quercus suber (Cork Oak) tree is such a case. Having a life expectation ranging from 200 to 500 years (depending on the cork extraction intensity) and with a capability of regeneration of its cork coverture, it concentrates the amounts of Lead, with which it had contacted through its life, in successive layers, corresponding, the larger ones, to the high temperatures season, and the thinner ones to the low temperatures season. So, the analysis of the content of the element in a layer of cork with a given amount of years in the tree, will be a good estimator of how the content of Lead as evolved in the area. And a correct distribution of sampling trees will show much more about a greater area. The possibility of choosing years by choosing layers of cork, and the fact that the sampling will not harm the tree, if properly done, make this procedure a novel and powerful tool in the monitorization of the dispersion of heavy metals in areas populated by Quercus suber, as it is the case of big areas in Portugal, the great of the greatest in everything related with this tree, namely economically, and, in general, in the area of the Mediterranean basin. This paper announces how the electroanalytical determination of Pb(II) by Differential Pulse Anodic Stripping Voltammetry (DPASV), recently done in the Department of Chemistry of the University of Évora, already accepted for publication in Portugaliae Electrochimica Acta, has proven to allow a deeper insight into the previously discussed problematic.