The environmental research programme of the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores, Sevilla (Spain)

This paper reports on three of the most recent applications in the field of Environmental Science carried out in the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA). Firstly, we investigated the sites of metal localization within the leaves of metal accumulator Arabidopsis thaliana, making use of nuclear microscopy techniques, when plants are grown in a cadmium-rich environment. Secondly, sediment samples from the Guadiamar River, where an environmental disaster of mining origin occurred in April 1998, were collected before and immediately after the accident, and in the spring of 2000, and analysed by Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE), in order to assess the contamination along the riverbed due to the mining activity prior to the disaster, and to evaluate the works carried out for the cleaning and restoration of the affected areas. Finally, we present the set up of the PIXE technique at the CNA for the characterization of aerosols by simultaneous determination of about 20 elements. (author)