Abstract
BackgroundHerbaceous plants are common vegetal species generally exposed, for a limited period of time, to bioavailable environmental pollutants. Heavy metals contamination is the most common form of environmental pollution. Herbaceous plants have never been used as natural bioindicators of environmental pollution, in particular to monitor the amount of heavy metals in soil. In this study, we aimed at assessing the usefulness of using three herbaceous plants (Plantago major L., Taraxacum officinale L. and Urtica dioica L.) and one leguminous (Trifolium pratense L.) as alternative indicators to evaluate soil pollution by heavy metals.ResultsWe employed Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES) to assess the concentration of selected heavy metals (Cu, Zn, Mn, Pb, Cr and Pd) in soil and plants and we employed statistical analyses to describe the linear correlation between the accumulation of some heavy metals and selected vegetal species. We found that the leaves of Taraxacum officinale L. and Trifolium pratense L. can accumulate Cu in a linearly dependent manner with Urtica dioica L. representing the vegetal species accumulating the highest fraction of Pb.ConclusionsIn this study we demonstrated that common plants can be used as an alternative analytical tool for monitoring selected heavy metals in soil.
Highlights
Herbaceous plants are common vegetal species generally exposed, for a limited period of time, to bioavailable environmental pollutants
We found that all analytical determinations performed by ICP-MS are affected by an error equal to 5%
Soil and plants sampling For this study we considered four different vegetal species (Plantago major L., Taraxacum officinale L., Urtica dioica L. and Trifolium pratense L.) collected in spring
Summary
Herbaceous plants are common vegetal species generally exposed, for a limited period of time, to bioavailable environmental pollutants. Heavy metals contamination is the most common form of environmental pollution. Herbaceous plants have never been used as natural bioindicators of environmental pollution, in particular to monitor the amount of heavy metals in soil. The contribution of lead to heavy metal pollution have to depend from other anthropogenic sources (i.e., exausted batteries, paintings and other industrial wastes). Heavy metals may impair plant physiology by reducing respiration and growth, interfering with photosynthetic processes and inhibiting fundamental enzymatic reactions if accumulated at high concentrations. When these toxic metals are present in soil at a low concentration, plants continue to grow uniformly despite accumulating these metals. The ability of plants to accumulate heavy metals into their organs may be used to monitor soil pollution, and in particular the amount of heavy metals
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