This study is the first year of the project “Tracing sources of Cu in contaminated soils of Taiwan with stable Cu isotopic ratios.” We aim to develop a high precision Cu isotope technique for a variety of environmental samples, including soil, river sediments, and water sample, and further study possible sources of metal pollutions. In this project, we have (1) reviewed/summarized the literatures regarding the analytical techniques and applications of stable Cu isotope for tracing sources of Cu in contaminated soils, (2) developed a high-precision stable Cu isotopic technique on a variety of environmental samples, and (3) trained several EAL staffs for the analytical techniques developed in this project. On the other hand, we also applied the developed analytical protocols to the soil samples collected from Taoyuan City, where the soils in farmlands were polluted by local industrial sources. The preliminary results show that Cu isotope ratios of the farmland soils are significantly heavier than those soils collected at the background site, and are within the range of isotopic characteristics of the local industrial wastes. These observations strongly suggest that the stable Cu isotope ratio can be a powerful tool for metal source tracing in the Cu-contaminated soils.

MC-ICP-MS, soil, metal pollution, Cu isotopes