Quality of Peri-Urban Soil Developed from Ore-Bearing Carbonates: Heavy Metal Levels and Source Apportionment Assessed Using Pollution Indices

Katarzyna Sutkowska,Tomasz Hulok,Leslaw Teper,Michał Olszak,Jan Zogala,Tomasz Czech

doi:10.3390/min10121140

Katarzyna Sutkowska, Tomasz Hulok + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/min10121140

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Abstract

Pollution indices are used to assess the influence of the bedrock as a natural source of heavy-metal (HM), and anthropogenic pollution from ore mining in soils developed from ore-bearing carbonates. The research was conducted in two areas differing in geological setting and type of land use in the Upper Silesia Industrial Region, Southern Poland. Physical properties such as pH, total sulfur, total carbon and total organic carbon values, as well as total Zn, Pb, and Cd contents (ICP-OES) for 39 topsoil samples were measured. Contamination factor (Cf), degree of contamination (Cdeg), pollution load index (PLI) and geoaccumulation index (Igeo), were used to determine the deterioration of topsoil due to HM pollution. The HM content exceeded geochemical background levels by 2.5–18.1 times. Very high to moderate topsoil contamination was determined. In a shallow historical mining zone, the relative influence of particular HM was found to be in the order of Pb > Cd > Zn and, in a deep mining zone, Zn > Cd > Pb. In the topsoil developed over shallow ore bodies, the HM content was mainly (60%) due to naturally occurring HM. In the area of deeply buried ore bodies, 90% of the HM load was related to anthropogenic sources. Zn, Pb and Cd vertical distributions and the patterns of topsoil pollution differ in terms of types of mined ores, mining methods and times elapsed since mining ceased. Pollution indices are an efficient tool for distinguishing soil anthropogenic pollution and geogenic contamination.

Highlights

Heavy metals (HM) in the environment originate from geological, industrial, agricultural, atmospheric, and waste sources
The total organic carbon (TOC) values obtained for the soil range from 0.2% to 23.12%
The application of various pollution indices (Cf, Cdeg, pollution load index (PLI), and Igeo ) and the local background value CB enable the detection of Zn, Pb, and Cd pollution in soils

Summary

Introduction

Heavy metals (HM) in the environment originate from geological, industrial, agricultural, atmospheric, and waste sources. A high concentration of HMs and metalloids (Zn, Pb, Cd, As, Tl, etc.) can be found in and around active and abandoned mines or smelting plants [1,2,3] due to the emission and dispersion of pollutants into air [4,5], water [6,7], soil [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], plants [4,18,19,20,21,22], and fauna [23,24]. The global average concentration of HMs in soils varies for Zn (10–300 mg·kg−1 ), Pb (10–150 mg·kg−1 ) and Cd (0.06 mg·kg−1 ) [25].

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