Surface coatings developed in three lakes and a river in Jilin Province, P. R. China were used to study the role of the composition of natural surface coatings in controlling Pb adsorption. Extraction techniques were used to remove one or more chemical components from surface coatings. Pb adsorption to the extracted and unextracted surface coatings was measured. The observed Pb adsorption to the extracted and unextracted surface coatings were analyzed using nonlinear least squares fitting(NLSF) to estimate the relative contribution of chemical components to the total Pb adsorption of surface coatings. In different waters, the contribution to Pb adsorption for each chemical component was different, but in all the waters studied here, metal oxides(Fe oxides and Mn oxides) contributed the most, with a relative small contribution of organic phase.
