Assessment of Toxic Metal Contamination of Bottom Sediments in Water Bodies in Urban Areas

Abstract

A study was carried out on 20 water bodies of the same origin in southern Poland. The study objectives included the assessment of toxic metal contamination in the bottom sediments of the water bodies in comparison with the geochemical background and sediments found in the substrate (i.e., vicinity) of the water bodies (i.e., the formations present in the surroundings of the water body itself), thus demonstrating the scale of anthropogenic enrichment of bottom sediments with toxic metals and assessing the cumulative impact on water bodies. The following amounts of toxic metals were found in the bottom sediments of the water bodies examined: 181.7-35200.0 ppm for zinc, 33.3-1648.8 ppm for lead, 1.8-359 ppm for cadmium, 14.0-271.5 ppm for copper, 45.3-167.5 ppm for chromium, and 12-128.5 ppm for nickel. Ratios of the values measured to the geochemical background were as follows: 0.7-135.9 (Zn), 0.6-53.0

Cadmium contamination of sediments in the water reservoirs in Silesian Upland (southern Poland)

“…Causes for the variation in Cd concentrations in bottom sediments between individual water bodies include differences in natural factors (these are usually related to geological structure) but primarily relate to human pressure, particularly, land use in the catchment and air pollution. Similar considerations apply to differences in the concentration of other metals, non-metals and metalloids in the region (Rzętała 2015a;2015b) and in other parts of the world (Astrom and Nylund 2000;O'Neill et al 2015).…”

“…Most commonly, the geochemical background for individual elements is used (Turekian and Wedepohl 1961;Bowen 1966;Li 2000;Li and Schoonmaker 2005). Equally popular is a solution in which the geochemical background of a region Pasieczna 1995a, 1995b;Tylmann et al 2011;Guo et al 2015;Rzętała 2015a;2015b;2015c) or study area (Tylmann et al 2011;Tang et al 2014) is taken into account, as well as the preindustrial content of the element in question in the environment (Håkanson 1980). …”

“…To date, the presence of Cd in the bottom sediments of water bodies has been discussed in the context of limnological studies that only touched upon this subject (Jankowski et al 2002;Ciszewski et al 2013;Rzętała et al 2013;Rzetala et al 2015;Rzętała 2014Rzętała , 2015b and also studies conducted within the framework of geochemical examination of soil and surface formations, water and aquatic sediments (Lis and Pasieczna 1995a, b). In those studies, the value of the regional geochemical background for Cd in aquatic sediments was determined at 2.5 mg kg −1 (Lis and Pasieczna 1995b).…”

Metals and tributyltin sediment contamination along the Southeastern Tyrrhenian Sea coast

“…Marine pollution in coastal areas is a major concern due to the large number of toxic substances discharged (Arizzi Novelli et al, 2006;Libralato et al, 2010aLibralato et al, , 2010bPrato et al, 2015) and accumulated in sediment that act as sink and source of pollution (Wenning and Ingersoll, 2002;Nikolaou et al, 2009;Rzetala, 2015). Especially in harbours and marinas, where exchange of water with the open sea is limited, the accumulation of toxic substances can pose major concerns for human and environmental health such as in presence of recreational waters and mariculture activities (Mamindy-Pajany et al, 2010;Schipper et al, 2010).…”

Determination of Trace Cr(VI) with Diphenylcarbazide by μFIA–Thermal Lens Microscopy

“…[1][2][3][4] Currently available novel methods for trace Cr(VI) determination rely on chromium speciation based on ion chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography or solid phase or liquid-liquid extraction coupled to atomic absorption and emission spectrometry or ICP-MS, [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] To avoid the need for separation of Cr(III) and Cr(VI) selective reagents were proposed, which react selectively with Cr(VI), such as rhodamine B hydrazide for spectrofluorimetric detection, 12 or well known diphenylcarbazide for spectrophotometric determination, which was recently significantly improved in sensitivity by using long-pathlength molecular absorption spectroscopy, or optical waveguide sensors. [13][14][15][16] However, there are several problems of the determination of trace amounts of this metal-production monitoring in environmental analysis, 17 cosmetic industry, 18 rapid clinical diagnostics, 19 several problems of sports medicine 20 -require rapid monitoring or (and) speciation analysis, which cannot be implemented by these techniques. Moreover, solving these problems require developing compact instruments and tests providing the possibilities of rapid and mobile analysis and diagnostics with high sensitivity (at the level of 10-100 nmol L -1 or lower 1,2 but without stationary in-laboratory equipment for example in the case of ICP-AES and ICP-MS.…”