Anthropogenic Particles
Definition
Particles with geological compositions that were created or modified by human industrial activity: coal fly ash, slag, concrete aggregate, crushed brick, and industrial mineral dusts. They often have geographic and industrial source signatures as distinctive as natural mineral assemblages.
- Examples
- Coal fly ash, slag, concrete aggregate, crushed brick
- Origin
- Human industrial activity
- Value
- Geographic and industrial source signatures
- Field
- Forensic geology
Common questions
How can fly ash composition point to a specific source?+
Fly ash chemistry varies with the coal source and combustion process of the plant that produced it, so its elemental and mineralogical profile can sometimes be matched to a particular power plant or industrial region.
Why are anthropogenic particles treated as seriously as natural minerals in geological trace evidence?+
They can be just as reproducible and locally distinctive as natural geology, and in built-up areas where natural soil signatures are diluted or disturbed, they may be the more reliable discriminator between candidate source locations.
Related terms
- Forensic Petrology
- The application of petrological methods (rock description, thin-section analysis, provenance tracing) to forensic questions. A forensic petrologist might match a rock fragment...
- Locard's Exchange Principle Applied to Geology
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- Mineral Assemblage
- The collection of mineral species present in a sample, and their proportions. Assemblages reflect the bedrock that eroded to produce the sediment,...
- Pedology
- The scientific study of soil as a natural body, including its formation, morphology, and classification. Forensic soil science applies pedological methods; forensic...
- Reference Population
- The set of samples representing the range of materials that could plausibly have produced the questioned sample, in the absence of the...