Heavy Metal Deposition and Soil Pollution Along Two Major Rural Highways

Abstract

Abstract. The influence of car transport on the sanitary state of the soils is the subject of numerous investigations, carried out in various regions of the world, including Poland. The purpose of the study here presented was to determine the content of the heavy metals (Ni, Pb, Cu, Zn, Cd, and Cr) in the soils of the areas situated along the roads, characterised by different intensities of traffic, different throughput capacities and smoothness of car traffic flow, as well as different road qualities. Investigations have been carried out in various regions of Poland, in the vicinity of the national roads, expressways, as well as motorways. The samples were collected along the transects, located perpendicularly to the road edge, at distances of 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 metres from the road edge. The analysis of the results obtained allowed for the formulation of the following conclusions: the differences as to the heavy metal content in the soils between the particular segments analysed reach the ratio of over 100 times; the decrease of heavy metal content in the soils follows the distance away from the road towards the open space, and is characterized by a more regular distribution in the case of the areas along the national roads and less regular in the case of areas along the motorways; with similar intensities of traffic, the impact of the motorways on the environment is decidedly lower than of the national roads.

Potential risk of cadmium in a soil-plant system as a result of long-term (10 years) pig manure application

“…This value was generally higher than those previously measured in different sites around the world, such as England and Wales (1.9 g/ha/year, Alloway 1999) and New Zealand (0.20 g/ha/year, Gray et al 2003), while it was comparable to that observed in the ChanC9 area of Varanasi (Indian) suffering with heavy traffic load (22.5 g/ha/year, Sharma et al 2008). Previous studies have also indicated that road traffic emissions were a main source of Cd in atmospheric deposition along the roadside (Sternbeck et al 2002, Legret andPagotto 2006). Thus, we concluded that such high atmospheric deposition rate of Cd in this field might result from the road traffic emissions because the experiment field is in close proximity to a highway (approximately 100 m).…”

Spatial and temporal variations in Pb concentrations and isotopic composition in road dust, farmland soil and vegetation in proximity to roads since cessation of use of leaded petrol in the UK

“…Vehicle exhaust emissions constituted a major source of Pb during the period of use of leaded petrol from the 1920s until the end of the 20 th century, generating high concentrations of Pb in soil and vegetation in the vicinity of roads as the result both of runoff affecting the immediate roadside environment and of atmospheric dispersion giving longer range transport (Harrison and Johnston, 1985, Zupančič, 1999, Legret and Pagotto, 2006, Preciado et al, 2007Yesilonis et al, 2008, Zehetner et al, 2009). …”

Using Local Moran's I to identify contamination hotspots of rare earth elements in urban soils of London

“…Due to the complex land use and heterogeneous nature of urban soils, the concentrations and distribution of REEs vary over space (Goovaerts, 2000;Legret and Pagotto., 2006;Mmolowa et al, 2011). When evaluating the potentially toxic elements from a specific area, it is necessary to assess the current status of REEs contamination and explore the factors that have influences on REE accumulation and distribution in urban soils Zhang el at., 2016).…”