Distribution and sources of trace element pollutants in the sediments of the industrialised Port Kembla Harbour, New South Wales, Australia

Mineralogy and heavy metal assessment of the Pietra del Pertusillo reservoir sediments (Southern Italy)

“…The study of heavy metal contamination in an aquatic environment has attracted increasing attention because of its abundance, persistence, and environmental toxicity (Sun et al 2016;Patel et al 2018;Wang et al 2019;Varol et al 2020). It has been observed that to define more accurately the quality of sediments potentially affected by heavy metals and pollutants, a correct option could be an intensive comparison of applied sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) (Burton 2018;Birch 2018;Liu et al 2019;Jones et al 2019). Comparative evaluations of different SQGs for contaminants, in order to obtain an environmental quality and risk assessment of internal waters, has been intensively provided in recent years (Ali et al 2016;Baran et al 2016;Bhateria and Jain 2016;Gopal et al 2017;Strady et al 2017;Xu et al 2017;Shyleshchandran et al 2018;Zhao et al 2018;Aung et al 2019;Kulbat and Sokołowska 2019;Christophoridis et al 2020).…”

“…Clay and organic matter contents are often used to calculate 'corrected' background values for trace metal concentrations in soils and sediments. Clay minerals largely affect metal clay retention (e.g., Mongelli 1995); Malla (2002) and Jones et al (2019), for instance, observed the effective adsorbing of 2 : 1 clay minerals of bivalent cations such as Cu, Pb, Cd, and Zn. The solubility of trace elements, such as Cu, Cr, Pb, and Zn (Alyazichi et al 2015), may be also associated to Mn oxides through coprecipitation and substitution and may increase when Mn is reduced (Negra et al 2005).…”

“…The reservoir sediments can be sensitive indicators for monitoring contaminants in aquatic environments (Liu et al 2018;Aung et al 2019;Kulbat and Sokołowska 2019;Zhuang et al 2019), acting as sinks for different pollutants. In particular, clay fraction is mainly enriched of heavy metals, especially in highly polluted sediments (Uddin 2017;Jones et al 2019). Depending on the environmental conditions (sediment pH, temperature, and redox status) and on the texture and composition of the sediments heavy metals may be released and back into the water column, thus impacting the overlying water quality (Mongelli et al 2015;Ammar et al 2015).…”