Pre-industrial atmospheric lead contamination detected in Swedish lake sediments

Renberg, Ingemar; Persson, Maurits; Emteryd, Ove

doi:10.1038/368323a0

Cited by 378 publications

(193 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…3). These changes parallel the trend of increases in lead observed in European and American lake sediments (Renberg et al, 1994;Graney et al, 1995;Monna et al, 1999;Renberg et al, 2002), but at much lower levels. Settle and Patterson (1980) concluded that because the residence time of atmospheric aerosols is an order of magnitude less than the interhemispheric exchange time, the impact in the Southern hemisphere from Northern hemisphere sources would be about one-tenth of that in the Northern Hemisphere; similar to fraction of lead in Lake Rotorua relation to the Northern Hemisphere lakes.…”

Section: Preindustrial Leadsupporting

confidence: 56%

“…Lead concentrations increase (> 2 µg Pb g -1 ) in the core commencing soon after deposition of the Tongariro tephra (age unknown but approximately 1700 AD), which may be related to a global increase in atmospheric lead levels (Settle and Patterson, 1980;Renberg et al, 1994) as there was no significant source of lead in New Zealand at this time of early Polynesian settlement. Globally, lead production has continued to increase since 5000 years BP and the concentration of lead in the sediments of Lake Rotorua mimics this global production trend (Fig.…”

Section: Preindustrial Leadmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Natural and anthropogenic lead in sediments of the Rotorua lakes, New Zealand

Pearson

Hendy

Hamilton

et al. 2010

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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Global atmospheric sources of lead have increased more than 100-fold over the past century as a result of deforestation, coal combustion, ore smelting and leaded petroleum. Lead compounds generally accumulate in depositional areas across the globe where, due to low solubility and relative freedom from microbial degradation, the history of their inputs is preserved. In lakes there is rapid deposition and often little bioturbation of lead, resulting in an excellent depositional history of changes in both natural and anthropogenic sources. The objective of this study was to use sediments from a regionally bounded set of lakes to provide an indication of the rates of environmental inputs of lead whilst taking into account differences of trophic state and lead exposure between lakes. Intact sediment gravity cores were collected from 13 Rotorua lakes in North Island of New Zealand between March 2006 and January 2007. Cores penetrated sediments to a depth of 16-30 cm and contained volcanic tephra from the 1886 AD Tarawera eruption. The upper depth of the Tarawera tephra enabled prescription of a date for the associated depth in the core (120 years). Each core showed a sub-surface peak in lead concentration above the Tarawera tephra which was contemporaneous with the peak use of lead alkyl as a petroleum additive in New Zealand. An 8 m piston core was taken in the largest of the lakes, Lake Rotorua, in March 2007. The lake is antipodal to the pre-industrial sources of atmospheric lead but still shows increasing lead concentrations from < 2 up to 3.5 µg g -1 between the Whakatane eruption (5530 ± 60 cal. yr BP) and the Tarawera eruption. Peaks in lead concentration in Lake Rotorua are associated with volcanic tephras, but are small compared with those arising from recent anthropogenic-derived lead deposition. Our results show that diagenetic processes associated with iron, manganese and sulfate 2 oxidation-reduction, and sulfide precipitation, act to smooth distributions of lead from anthropogenic sources in the lake sediments. The extent of this smoothing can be related to changes in sulfate availability and reduction in sulfide driven by differences in trophic status amongst the lakes. Greatest lead mobilisation occurs in mesotrophic lakes during seasonal anoxia as iron and manganese are released to the porewater, allowing upward migration of lead towards the sediment-water interface. This lead mobilisation can only occur if sulfides are not present. The sub-surface peak in lead concentrations in lake sediments ascribed to lead alkyl in petroleum persists despite the diagenetic processes acting to disperse lead within the sediments and into the overlying water.

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Section: Preindustrial Leadsupporting

confidence: 56%

Section: Preindustrial Leadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural and anthropogenic lead in sediments of the Rotorua lakes, New Zealand

Pearson

Hendy

Hamilton

et al. 2010

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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“…The bottom level of 19.5 cm does not reach unpolluted (background) conditions, since the isotope ratio is declining through the whole core (no stable background values). This early airborne pollution might be both regional and long-distance in nature given the long history of global lead pollution dating back to the GreekRoman times (e.g., Renberg et al 1994).…”

Section: Core Chronologies and Pollution Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Palaeolimnological evidence for recent climatic change in lakes from the northern Urals, arctic Russia

et al. 2005

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The recent sediments from two deep arctic lakes, Mitrofanovskoe and Vanuk-ty, situated in the permafrost belt within the Bol'shezemel'skaya Tundra in the northern Ural region, were studied for diatoms, chironomids, spheroidal carbonaceous particles and stable lead isotopes. The magnitudes and rates-of-change in diatom and chironomid assemblages were numerically estimated. Instrumental climate records were used to assess statistically the amount of variance in diatom and chironomid data explained by temperature. August and September air temperatures have a statistically significant effect on diatom composition at both lakes. At Mitrofanovskoe Lake, major compositional changes in diatom and chironomid assemblages occurred at the turn of the 20th century and might be related to the regional increase in temperature. Chironomidinferred air temperature also increased by approximately 1°C since the early 1900s. At both lakes diatom compositional changes, coincident with the increase in June and September temperatures, also occurred in the late 1960s. These compositional changes are correlated with the increase in diatom production, sediment organic content and diatom species richness, and are likely to be a diatom response to the lengthening of the growing season. These changes are also correlated with the circum-Arctic temperature increase from the 1960s. A chironomid response to the late 1960s temperature increase was less pronounced at both lakes. Pollution levels are relatively low and pollution history is unrelated to ecological changes. Both lead isotopes and spheroidal carbonaceous particles show a clear atmospheric pollution signal, peaking in the 1980s.

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“…Metal-enriched effluent may discharge directly from a mine, spoil heap or smelter into aquatic systems (Audry et al 2004;Mayes et al 2013;Boyle et al 2015a), while the emission and subsequent atmospheric deposition of metal particulates can also be a source of contamination across much wider scales (Renberg et al 1994;Brännvall et al 2001;Rippey and Douglas 2004). Point-source contamination from mining activities can significantly exceed atmospheric supply (Farmer et al 1997;Yang and Rose 2005;Thevenon et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying system disturbance and recovery from historical mining-derived metal contamination at Brotherswater, northwest England

et al. 2016

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Metal ore extraction in historical times has left a legacy of severe contamination in aquatic ecosystems around the world. In the UK, nationwide surveys of present-day pollution discharged from abandoned mines are ongoing but few assessments of the magnitude of contamination and impacts that arose during historical metal mining have been made. We report one of the first multi-centennial records of lead (Pb), zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu) fluxes into a lake (Brotherswater, northwest England) from pointsources in its catchment (Hartsop Hall Mine and Hogget Gill processing plant) and calculate basin-scale inventories of those metals. The pre-mining baseline for metal contamination has been established using sediment cores spanning the past 1500 years and contemporary material obtained through sediment trapping. These data enabled the impact of 250 years of local, small-scale mining to be quantified and an assessment of the trajectory towards system recovery to be made. The geochemical stratigraphy displayed in twelve sediment cores show strong correspondence to the documented history of metal mining and processing in the catchment. The initial onset in 1696 was detected, peak Pb concentrations ([10,000 lg g -1 ) and flux (39.4 g m -2 year -1 ) corresponded to the most intensive mining episode (1863-1871) and twentieth century technological enhancements were reflected as a more muted sedimentary imprint. After careful evaluation, we used these markers to augment a Bayesian agedepth model of the independent geochronology obtained using radioisotope dating ( 14 C, 210 Pb, 137 Cs and 241 Am). Total inventories of Pb, Zn and Cu for the lake basin during the period of active mining were 15,415, 5897 and 363 kg, respectively. The postmining trajectories for Pb and Zn project a return to pre-mining levels within 54-128 years for Pb and 75-187 years for Zn, although future remobilisation of metal-enriched catchment soils and floodplain sediments could perturb this recovery. We present a transferable paleolimnological approach that highlights flux-based assessments are vital to accurately establish the baseline, impact and trajectory of mining-derived contamination for a lake catchment.

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Pre-industrial atmospheric lead contamination detected in Swedish lake sediments

Cited by 378 publications

References 13 publications

Natural and anthropogenic lead in sediments of the Rotorua lakes, New Zealand

Natural and anthropogenic lead in sediments of the Rotorua lakes, New Zealand

Palaeolimnological evidence for recent climatic change in lakes from the northern Urals, arctic Russia

Quantifying system disturbance and recovery from historical mining-derived metal contamination at Brotherswater, northwest England

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