Investigation of the pollution in the street dust at Xuzhou, China, using magnetic, micro-morphological and Mössbauer spectra analyses

Abstract

This study reports a detailed examination of the magnetic mineralogy of street dust samples collected in Xuzhou, a heavily industrial city in China. Several different approaches have been utilized in the characterization, from standard mineral magnetic techniques such as magnetic hysteresis and microscopy to non-standard techniques such as Mossbauer spectroscopy. Magnetic properties and the concentrations of four metals including Cu, Zn, Ba and Pb were reported for each sample. The primary magnetic mineral was found to be multidomain magnetite-like material. Scanning electron microscope analyses of street dust revealed: spherule-shaped iron oxides and angular particles with complex chemical composition. The concentrations of Cu, Zn, Pb and Ba were 3, 4.8, 2.8 and 1.3 times higher, respectively, than the soil background values of this study area. Both Cu and Ba showed significant correlations with the magnetic concentration parameters χARM (susceptibility of anhysteretic remanent magnetization) and saturation isothermal remanent magnetization. The combination of the various methods offers a powerful analytical technique in the study of magnetic properties of street dust.