Heavy Metals Soil Pollution in Some Urban Location from Romania
The heavy metal content in superior horizons, 0–20 cm depth of urban soils situated lengthways of the main streets was analyzed from three Romanian municipalities: Bucharest, Iassy and Baia Mare. The last city, Baia Mare, has received a stronger anthropog
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Introduction Urban soils derive from those natural pursuant to anthropogenic influence caused by human settlement construction and their development. The transformation level is directly proportional with urbanization process intensity, with its nature and civilization degree reached by inhabitants. On the strength of these reasons, the urban space will be separated in zones. In some zones the natural soil has been strongly modified, sometimes removed as a consequence of civilian and industrial buildings, urban equipment, and communication routes systems constructions. In other zones the soil has been less modified, but has received and still is, receiving negative impacts, caused by daily household or industrial activities. The soils belonging to this category are soils from green spaces less modified by urbanism and soils from gardens of peripheral and suburban areas denizens. At last, a final category is represented by soils from urban space integral keeping its natural character. These are soils existing under the woods included in the urban space as parks along the time, and soils that have been suffered an anthropogenic modification. It is indubitable that the abundance of chemical elements in urban soils is a result of geogenic abundance and anthropogenic influence. This is decisive for urban soils properties modification, mainly those of chemicals, and can explain the large amplitude of heavy metal content variations in urban soils [1, 2]. Urban traffic of different vehicle types has a significant role not merely to air pollution but also near the roads with heavy and congested automobile traffic soils pollution. Many times the input of additional material utilized for streets construction has a major contribution to soil chemical composition change. The permanent contribution on roadside soil chemical transformation is represented by emissions during combustion of fuels, predominantly leaded gasoline, in vehicle engines. R. Lacatusu Al. I. Cuza University, Iassy R. Lacatusu and A.-R. Lacatusu National R&D Institute for Soil Science, Agrochemistry and Environment Protection Bucharest S. Rauch et al. (eds.), Highway and Urban Environment, Alliance for Global Sustainability Bookseries 17, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3043-6_37, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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From the metal chemical element groups, the most aggressive impact belongs to lead. This is due to the use as an antiknock additive in some gasoline compositions [3]. The lead originating from gasoline combustion has been polluting all environment components, including inhabitants [4, 5]. Today, despite of the unleaded gasoline preponderant use, the historical impact of gasoline with lead additives during the last decades is still observable on soil. Other heavy metals from the gasoline, diesel and tire compositions have gotten into the soil because of fuels burning and wear of auto tires. Industrial emissions have a considerable contribution to urban soils pollution, including those located along roads.
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