ABSTRACT
Until the early 1970s most of the work on trace element/particle interactions focused on the interactions of ions with charged surfaces. Concurrent with the development of scavenging models emphasizing chemistry was the application of uranium- and thorium-series radionuclide disequilibrium to problems of oceanic mixing and the estimation of particle and trace element residence times. Frank Balistrieri and Andy Murray were among the first to extend the techniques and chemical formalisms of surface chemists to the study of interactions at the seawater interface of natural particles through controlled laboratory experiments. As particles are transferred throughout the particle-size spectrum, trace elements and radionuclides associated with those particles, either as sorbed species or intrinsic components of the particle matrix, are also moved between particle pools. Regardless, knowing mass concentration of the colloid and particle pools provides only a rough estimate of their relative influence on trace element behavior.
