Past mining activities in the area of Silvermines, Ireland, have resulted in heavily polluted soils. The
possibility of spreading pollution to the surrounding areas through dust blow-offs poses a potential threat
for the local communities. Conventional environmental soil and dust analysis techniques are very slow
and laborious and consequently there is a need for fast and accurate analyticalmethods, which can provide
real-time in situ pollution mapping.
Laboratory-based aqua regia acid digestion of the soil samples collected in the area followed by
the atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) analysis confirmed very high pollution, especially by
Pb, As, Cu, and Zn. In parallel, samples were analyzed using portable X-ray fluorescence radioisotope
and miniature tube powered (XRF) NITON instruments and their performance was compared. Overall,
the portable XRF instrument gave excellent correlation with the laboratory-based reference AAS
method.