Content of Zn, Cd and Pb in purple moor-grass in soils heavily contaminated with heavy metals around a zinc and lead ore tailing landfill

Abstract

The paper presents concentrations and correlations between Zn, Cd and Pb in the aboveground parts of purple moor-grass (Molinia caerulea L.) in forest soils heavily contaminated with heavy metals around a zinc and lead ore tailing landfill at Mining & Metallurgy Enterprise “Bolesław” SA in Bukowno. Field observations have indicated that purple moor-grass, which occurs as one of the few vascular plants in locations with tailing mud, is probably a species with high adaptability to conditions in contaminated environments. The research was carried out in a network of 20 regular monitoring sites. At these sites, a detailed inventory of purple moor-grass was carried out and samples of the aboveground parts of the plants were collected from the leaves and ears and from the soil at a depth of 0-20 cm. It was found that there was no significant correlation between the concentration of heavy metals in the soils and aboveground parts of the plants in the most heavily contaminated zones. This may indicate the existence of mechanisms limiting uptake of heavy metals by this species, and therefore the need for further research in the context of its suitability for biological regeneration of tailing landfills and phytosanitary protection of adjoining areas.

Micro- and macroelement contents in the liver of farm and wild animals and the health risks involved in liver consumption

“…Researchers, including Neila et al ( 2017 ), Damek-Poprawa and Sawicka-Kapusta ( 2004 ), Durkalec et al ( 2015 ), Antonkiewicz et al ( 2018 ), also demonstrated the importance of inter-species and individual differences resulting from adaptive processes related to inheritance of resistance in a given population or a given individual with increased resistance to high metal concentrations in the environment. Such resistance, involving the ability to exclude excess xenobiotics from metabolism or deposit them in specific organs, increases tolerance and changes the toxicity threshold (Kicińska 2016 ; Kicińska and Jelonek-Waliszewska 2017 ; Kołacz et al 2003 ; Pietrzykowski et al 2018 ). One such organ, especially with regard to metal accumulation, is the liver.…”

Potential of Grasses in Phytolith Production in Soils Contaminated with Cadmium

“…Cadmium accumulation patterns in plants vary in tolerant, nontolerant and hyperaccumulating species [4,9]. Metal hyperaccumulating plants have high concentrations of Cd in the dry mass but produce little biomass, which results in low metal absorption per area [15,20].…”

“…Plants in better nutritional status are more tolerant to adverse growth factors [8,22], and Megathyrsus maximus has a higher production potential compared to Urochloa sp., being more responsive to soil fertilization [21]. However, production and elemental composition of phytoliths are influenced by element availability and absorption, climatic conditions (transpiration flow), plant species, silicon concentration and soil type, variety, location, disease resistance and fertilizer requirements [5,6,20,28,29].…”

“…Cadmium is extremely toxic at concentrations between 5 and 10 mg kg −1 in dry mass for most plants [4,8] and can cause various biochemical, structural and physiological changes [1,2,4,[9][10][11], as well as imbalance of plant nutritional status [8,[12][13][14][15][16][17]. Plants develop various mechanisms of tolerance to metal accumulation in the shoots [4,14,[18][19][20], being the occlusion and sequestration of Cd in phytolith produced in the shoots [1,10,14].…”

Environmentally Degraded Mining Areas of Eastern Slovakia As a Potential Object of Geotourism

“…The most important contaminants are heavy metals in sediments of tailing ponds and heaps. The burden manifests itself across all components of the earth's land sphere [5][6][7][8][9][10] or within individual components: air [11], water [12][13][14][15], soil [11,12,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], and flora and fauna [15,[26][27][28]. Last but not least, the negative effect of these or similar forms is also manifested in humans [10,19,29,30].…”