Military grounds are the largest military activity territories in Lithuania. In some of them, military activities are going on for more than 100 years. Specific nature of long‐term activities carried out in military grounds with military equipment, weapons, ammunition and different busters have caused the anomalies of pollution with heavy metals in some places. And what is more, in many places the environment is polluted with oil products, remains of bullets and explosive devices can be found in tactical fields, and continuous devastation has resulted in a sandy soil. The damage caused to the environment by military activities is not limited with pollution of military grounds and surrounding landscapes with different chemical substances. Water that gets into the soil destroys the remains of explosives and ammunition, filters into the deeper layers of the soil and poses a risk of pollution. The surface layer of the soil is a barrier protecting subsoil water against pollution with different chemical substances. By the extent of soil pollution, it could be judged about the risk of subsoil water pollution. The carried out investigation was aimed at finding out the distribution of heavy metals characteristic of munition (zinc, copper, lead) in the deeper layers of the soil (up to 1‐meter depth) and the trends of its changes. Tests were carried out in two major military grounds of Lithuania located in different places but used for the same purpose. The received results allowed not only to evaluate the extent of pollution with heavy metals but also to determine the peculiarities of their migration.
Water pollution with heavy metals, oil and its products is a very important environmental problem. Major part of chemical elements penetrating into the environment gets accumulated in the soil and bed sediment of water bodies. They may also migrate into surface, ground and underground water and spread at great distances. From here, they may enter again nutritional chains and poison living organisms. It is very important and necessary to investigate military territories and evaluate their environmental condition in order to identify the works of their cleaning and optimization of their environmental condition as well as their scope. However, not all the military territories in Lithuania have been sufficiently investigated so far, damage to the environment is not known. Therefore, investigation of such territories is of utmost importance, it is of scientific and environmental significance. This work is dedicated to the investigation and evaluation of surface water and bed sediment pollution with heavy metals and oil products in one of the biggest military grounds of Lithuania ‐ Kairiai Military Ground. Results of the investigation allowed answering the main questions about the most common pollutants, spreading in the environment because of military activities, to determine the level of pollution and most vulnerable territories.
Soil of military grounds is often polluted with heavy metals. Their concentrations may be dosens of times higher in polluted regions. The affected soils are permeable, so the pollutions can get into water and spread to the environment. Into human and animal organisms they can get with food and water. Heavy metals are very dangerous for people's health, and we must know their accumulation places, intensity of scatter and integral risk for health. The purpose of this work was to establish links between zones polluted with heavy metals and morbidity caused by pollution with heavy metals. The morbidity caused by heavy metals (Pb, Cu, Zn, Ca and other) in the polluted regions is 1.4-1.5 times higher for adults and teenagers and 1.5-3.9 times higher for children aged under 14 years than the mean morbidity of the same diseases in Lithuania. Hypothetically, it is possible to prognosticate that this problem will grow in future because the ratio of the newly registered and the existing cases of morbidity for children aged under 14 years is 1.3-1.5 times higher than for adults.
Recently environmental pollution became a problem of a special significance. Removal of pollutants from territories suffering from intensive use in the past and at present attracts major concern. Extensive pollution of the soil with materials of organic origin (oil and its products) was detected in the areas of the former military bases of different operation types. The surface soil is the first natural system to be directly affected by any level of pollution and it accumulates pollutants. Water dissolves and washes out materials from the soil saturated with oil hydrocarbons and it is also polluted with oil products. The present paper describes the evaluation of environmental pollution caused by military activity in the operating Rukla-Gaiþiûnai Military Training Ground. After investigation of soil pollution with oil products was performed, it was possible to analyse particularly the present soil condition and assess the most contravened places referring to the obtained results.
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