The Anthrobiogeochemical Cycle of Indium: A Review of the Natural and Anthropogenic Cycling of Indium in the Environment

Abstract

Indium is an important metal whose production is increasing dramatically due to new uses in the rapidly growing electronics, photovoltaic, and LED industries. Little is known about the natural or industrial cycling of indium, and toxicological data are incomplete. This review presents the existing state of knowledge of indium's natural and industrial fluxes, chemical behavior, toxicity, and analytical methods by which it is measured. Additionally, the authors present evidence of industrial influence on environmental indium concentrations, and seek to define future research needs that may allow a thorough investigation of the environmental behavior of indium and allow informed decisions about its use, handling, and disposal.

KEY WORDS:

• indium
• metal cycling
• emerging contaminant
• life-cycle analysis

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Funding was provided by NSF Grant CBET-0853866, an MIT Earth Systems Initiative Ignition Grant, and the SRC/Sematech Engineering Research Council for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacture. Additional support was provided by an MIT Earth Systems Initiative Linden Graduate Fellowship and an MIT Energy Initiative Martin Family Graduate Fellowship for Sustainability to Sarah Jane O. White, and by the William E. Leonhard Professorship to Harold F. Hemond. The authors thank Ajay Somani and Duane Boning at MIT's Department of Materials Science; Paudely Zamora, Patricia Burkhart, and Vicky Diadiuk at MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratory; and Tim Yeakley at Texas Instruments for information on semiconductor manufacture. They also thank Will Fox, Loretta Fernandez, Ed Boyle, and Cynthia Hines for comments on the manuscript and Phil Gschwend for fruitful conversations. Maria Duiame helped with the Charles River sample preparation, Katherine Orchard helped with literature searches, and Charuleka Varadharajan, Amy Mueller, Desiree Plata, and Dave Kuo helped with field sampling.