Geochemical wolframite fingerprinting - the likelihood ratio approach for laser ablation ICP-MS data.

ABSTRACT: Wolframite has been specified as a 'conflict mineral' by a U.S. Government Act, which obliges companies that use these minerals to report their origin. Minerals originating from conflict regions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shall be excluded from the market as their illegal mining, trading, and taxation are supposed to fuel ongoing violent conflicts. The German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) developed a geochemical fingerprinting method for wolframite based on laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Concentrations of 46 elements in about 5300 wolframite grains from 64 mines were determined. The issue of verifying the declared origins of the wolframite samples may be framed as a forensic problem by considering two contrasting hy

SUBMITTER: Martyna A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5910492 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature