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RETRACTED ARTICLE: Isotopic analysis of N and O in NO3 − by selective bacterial reduction to N2O for groundwater pollution

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This article was retracted on 14 November 2015

Abstract

We describe a method to determine the nitrogen and oxygen isotopic composition of nitrate in groundwater samples (15N/14N and 18O/16O, respectively), which is based on the analysis of nitrous oxide gas (N2O) that is produced quantitatively from nitrate by denitrifying bacteria. This method which is simple, inexpensive and effective in the removal of nitrite is greatly selective for NO2 − and was used for mixed samples containing both NO2 − and NO3 − with little or no measurable cross-contamination. The precision of δ15N and δ18O are 0.3 and 0.17 ‰ respectively, compared to that of 0.1 and 0.5 ‰ abroad (Brand et al. in Org Geochem 21:585–594, 1994; Begley and Scrimgeour in Anal Chem 69(8): 1530–1535, 1997; Kornexl et al. in Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 13(16):1685–1693, 1999; Böhlke et al. in Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 17:1835–1846, 2003; Gehre and Strauch in Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 17(13):1497–1503, 2003; Werner in Isot Environ Health Stud 39:85–104, 2003).

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC Grant Nos. 41072179 and 41002083). The authors would like to thank associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and comments on this manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Studies & State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Jingjing Fang, Chuanming Ma, Cunfu Liu & Xiangbing Yue

Authors
  1. Jingjing Fang
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  2. Chuanming Ma
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  3. Cunfu Liu
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  4. Xiangbing Yue
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chuanming Ma.

Additional information

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. The article was examined following the COPE guidelines with regard to suspected plagiarism. The article was found to contain a substantial amount of material, without proper referencing, from the previously published articles entitled:

Böhlke John Karl, Smith Richard L., Hannon Janet E., (2007) Isotopic Analysis of N and O in Nitrite and Nitrate by Sequential Selective Bacterial Reduction to N2O, Analytical Chemistry 79 (15), 5888-5895, DOI:10.1021/ac070176k

Granger Juli, Sigman Daniel M., Prokopenko Maria G., Lehmann Moritz F., Tortell Philippe D., (2006), A method for nitrite removal in nitrate N and O isotope analyses, Limnol. Oceanogr. Methods, 4 (7), 205-212, DOI:10.4319/lom.2006.4.205

Sigman D. M., Casciotti K. L., Andreani M., Barford C., Galanter M., Böhlke J. K., (2001) A Bacterial Method for the Nitrogen Isotopic Analysis of Nitrate in Seawater and Freshwater, Analytical Chemistry 73 (17), 4145-4153. DOI:10.1021/ac010088e

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Fang, J., Ma, C., Liu, C. et al. RETRACTED ARTICLE: Isotopic analysis of N and O in NO3 − by selective bacterial reduction to N2O for groundwater pollution. Ecotoxicology 23, 2025–2029 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1360-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1360-1

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