The Most Important Pollutants of Eastern Slovakia Waters

Abstract

As the area of the Slovak Republic is 49,036 km², there are many potential contaminants that can affect its population. In the socialist era the town of Strážske located in the Košice Municipal Region was the centre of production of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) inter alia and nowadays about 3,500 metric tonnes of PCB are persisting there and present the greatest PCB environmental risk in the central Europe. The heavy metal contamination in Slovakia is caused by the natural background as well as by the former mining activities. In Slovakia there are about 17 thousand old mining works, i.e. adits, stocks, and impoundments. Contamination of the ground and surface waters in the Spiš–Gemer Ore Mountain (SGOM) area is caused by mine drainage. Arsenic, antimony, copper, mercury, cadmium, and zinc are the main pollutants of natural waters. All contaminated areas are currently monitored according to the national and EU legislation and nutrient load reduction programmes. As a result of this the level of inorganic and organic micropollutants in surface water and water reservoirs will be reduced together with the negative impact of water pollution on the environment in Eastern Slovakia region.

Concentration of Trace Elements in Raptors from Three Regions of Slovakia, Central Europe

“…It was an important gold and mercury mining area for centuries and it can be also the reason for the higher Hg concentration in some samples [33]. Recent monitoring confirmed also strong contamination of surface waters in Spiš with several metals including mercury, copper and lead [34]. Moreover, in this region besides anthropogenic influences also geochemical anomalies are conducive to higher content of heavy metals [25,33].…”

“…The Land Use/Land Cover Area Frame Survey (LUCAS) performed in European Union showed that in more than 95 % of topsoil samples As was detected with concentration below 20 mg/kg and a high portion of samples contain As bellow the limit of detection [33]. In Slovakia, the highest As levels, connected to metal purification industry and fossil fuel combustion, were detected in the Košice region [34].…”

A fish-parasite sentinel system in an assessment of the spatial distribution of polychlorinated biphenyls

“…During regular monitoring of the Zemplínska Šírava reservoir from 1999 to 2007, high levels of PCB indicator congeners (up to 1633 μg kg −1 dry weight) were measured in bottom sediments 22 . It is assumed that at least 40,000 tons of PCB-contaminated sediments are still present in the reservoir and in the sediments in the waste water canals 23,24 . Even though no recent complex measurements of PCBs in the sediments have been made, we do not assume a significant reduction of the contamination by natural attenuation, as no remediation measures have been implemented yet.…”