[en] Stainless steelmaking slags are suitable for application in road construction. However, it exists environmental concerns regarding the utilization and landfilling of stainless steel slag by virtue of the presence of heavy metals and especially to the leachable quantities of hexavalent chromium. Hexavalent chromium has been identified as a priority pollutant by Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) as a result of its carcinogenicity, toxicity and mutagenicity. Leaching tests are used to help to quantify toxic inputs due to mobilization of contaminants and the pH is one of the main parameters that helps to determine heavy metal mobility of waste materials. This paper discusses the use of pH leaching tests (Method 1313 US EPA) as a tool to assess the potential mobilization of trivalent and hexavalent chromium from stainless steelmaking slags. The method consists of parallel batch extractions of solid material, each one with an aliquot of either dilute acid or base. The total chromium concentration of the leach solutions were measured by inductively couple plasma optical emissions spectrometry (ICP-OES) and the hexavalent chromium concentration were measured by ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy.
