The Influence of Soil Properties on the Mobility of Metals Following a Single Application of Polluted Sewage Sludge to Seventy Agricultural Topsoils: A Laboratory Column Study

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to examine the influence of soil properties on the leaching of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn following the application of polluted sewage sludge to contrasting topsoils. Seventy agricultural soil samples from different parts of Spain were amended with a single dose of sewage sludge (equivalent to 50 t dry weight ha−1) and a column study was performed under controlled conditions. After two, four, and six months of incubation, 283 ml of distilled water (equivalent to a rainfall event of 25 l m−2) was applied. The leachates were then collected and analyzed for metals. For all of the soils considered, the pH was the most important parameter for the control of mobility metals (except for Cu, determined by the sand and soil organic carbon and only to a lesser extent by the soil pH r2 = 0.604, p < 0.001) and was negatively related to all of the studied metals. For Pb and Zn, soil pH was the single soil property explaining their mobility (r2 = 0.411, p < 0.001 for Pb; r2 = 0.713, p < 0.001 for Zn) while for Cd, Cr and Ni, EC, sand and silt also appeared in the statistical models (r2 = 0.753, p < 0.001 for Cd; r2 = 0.366, p < 0.001 for Cr; r2 = 0.784, p < 0.001 for Ni). In the basic soils, soil texture was the most important soil property controlling the mobility of metals (except for that of Pb, which it only weakly predicted). For the acidic-neutral soils, the soil pH was the most important soil property controlling metal mobility (except for that of Cr, which was mainly determined by the pseudo-total Cr content).