Ambient trace element background concentrations in soils and their use in risk assessment

Are conventional statistical techniques exhaustive for defining metal background concentrations in harbour sediments? A case study: The Coastal Area of Bari (Southeast Italy)

“…This graphical approach has been employed by several authors (Lepeltier, 1969;Bouer and Bor, 1995;Diez et al, 2009;Jiang et al, 2013) to identify turning points that separate the background values from the contaminated concentrations. Fig.…”

Concentrations of Available Heavy Metals in Mediterranean Agricultural Soils and their Relation with Some Soil Selected Properties: A Case Study in Typical Mediterranean Soils

“…The reference value (RV) was taken as the upper limit of the GBC, and was used to determine whether a soil might be contaminated or not [41]. The identification of a specific type of soil as contaminated means that the total contaminant content is higher than would normally be expected in non-contaminated areas [31]. The RV values were used to evaluate the soils' contamination and quality.…”

“…The upper limit of the GBC could be used as the RV against which to assess soil contamination [31] find that this method is far more effective than others that have been put forward in the specialized literature. Using therefore the upper GBC values as the RVs of the available heavy metals (Cd 0.9; Cr 2.5; Cu 6.3; Ni 7.9; Pb 4.5; and Zn 2.50; all in mg kg ) with which to determine whether or not a soil is contaminated, we found that 2% for Cd, 6% for Cr, 1% for Cu, 4.5% for Pb, 5% for Ni, and 4% for Zn of the samples were slightly contaminated.…”

“…It is widely accepted that the BL and GBC were the best approach to establish the levels of non-contaminated soils 26 Different approaches have been taken to establishing the GBC of trace elements in Mediterranean soils [12,18,[29][30][31]. Most have centered on the total heavy metal content without considering the bioavailability of the different elements involved [32], even though, according to Baldantoni et al [33], bioavailability constitutes the best indicator of the potential impact of these contaminants.…”

Soil quality improvement by the establishment of a vegetative cover in a mine soil added with composted municipal sewage sludge

“…As the result of open mining operations up to 260 ha of waste materials was disposed . This iron-open cut mine produced about 3.3 million metric tons per year in the mid-nineties (Díez et al, 2009). The main ore minerals in Alquife outcrop are hematite, goethite and siderite (Torres Ruiz, 1980).…”