Ecological Chemistry of the Natural Waters

Background

By the chemical point of view, natural water represent very dilute solutions, which include the following components: dissolved gases; macro-elements that determine mineralization; different mineral forms of biogenic elements; micro-elements and various types of organic substances and pollutants (Miller and Zepp, 1979; Travin et al., 1986). All these components were studied usually by hydro-chemical methods and represent the well known traditional approach.

By the physicochemical point of view, natural waters represent an open photochemical and catalytic system with several components and phases. In natural waters the redox processes take place, in the presence of metal ions with variable valence (Duca et al., 1989; Andrews et al., 1998). The composition of natural waters is not constant, being determined by several factors such as climate conditions, variety of microflora, duration and intensity of solar radiation, anthropic factor, etc. As a result of the redox processes, a large number of active substances are formed: hydrogen peroxide, singlet oxygen, ozone, free radicals, etc. (Skurlatov et al., 1989; Alvarez et al., 1998; Thannickal and Fanburg, 2000; Duca, 2012; Gonciaruc, 2012).