Terrestrial Ecotoxic Impacts Stemming from Emissions of Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn from Manure: A Spatially Differentiated Assessment in Europe

Abstract

Metallic elements present in livestock manure as co-contaminants have the potential to cause terrestrial ecotoxic impacts when the manure is used as fertilizer on agricultural soils. The magnitude of this impact at country scale in Europe has, to date, not been quantified. Here, we address this knowledge gap by combining recently developed national emission inventories of Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn releases from manure with metal- and soil-specific comparative toxicity potentials (CTP) calculated for cropland grid cells at 1 × 1 km resolution for 33 European countries. The CTPs account for speciation in environmental fate, exposure and effects, including reduction in the solid-phase reactivity of a metal when it is associated with organic carbon present in the manure. Given the scarcity of inventory data at sub-national level, it was assumed that each unit area of cropland within a given country has the same probability to receive manure. The resulting CTPs span a range of several orders of magnitude reflecting the influence of soil type and properties on the speciation patterns and resulting CTP values. However, when combined with the use of manure in each European country, the resulting national impact scores were mainly explained by the total mass input of metal released to soil rather than by geographic variability in the CTP values. Simple linear regression is then sufficient to predict terrestrial ecotoxic impacts from input mass. Although some changes in ranking of metals and countries were observed, both mass- and impact-based comparisons between metals agreed that Zn and Cu are dominant contributors to total impacts, and that top contributing countries were those emitting the largest amounts of metals. Our findings show that spatially differentiated impact assessment is important for ranking of countries when differences in national emission inventories between countries are smaller than a factor of two (Ni), a factor of three (Cd, Cu, Zn) or a factor of four (Pb). In other cases, ranking of countries can be based on national emission inventories.

Ameliorative Effects of Exogenous Proline on Photosynthetic Attributes, Nutrients Uptake, and Oxidative Stresses under Cadmium in Pigeon Pea (Cajanus cajan L.)

“…Plants, due to being sessile and directly dependent on the soil, frequently experience the harmful effects of these heavy metals [5]. Among the heavy metals, cadmium is a highly toxic, non-degradable pollutant that significantly impacts living organisms [6][7][8]. It is discharged into the environment from metalworking industries, power stations, heating systems, and urban traffic [2,9].…”

Influence of metal speciation on soil ecotoxicity impacts in life cycle assessment

“…The method is included in the new LCIA methodology LC-IMPACT (LC-IMPACT -A Spatially Differentiated Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method Home Page, 2019). It has been used in two LCA studies so far and Sydow et al (2018)). For comparisons, IMPACT 2002+ and ReCiPe 2008 were chosen because these methods do not consider speciation, cover relatively large number of metallic elements, and are widely used by LCA practitioners (Hauschild et al, 2013;Rosenbaum et al, 2018).…”

Trace contaminants in the environmental assessment of organic waste recycling in agriculture: Gaps between methods and knowledge

“…Accordingly, Owsianiak et al (2015) recommended incorporating the emission source effect, including the OW-related emission source effect, in the CTP calculation to improve assessment of the terrestrial ecotoxicological impact of trace elements in LCA procedures. Sydow et al (2018) combined the national inventories performed by Leclerc and Laurent (2017) and the assessment of the terrestrial ecotoxicological impact of OW-related emission sources suggested by Owsianiak et al (2015) to assess the terrestrial ecotoxicological impact of agricultural OW-bound trace element inputs after spreading on agricultural fields in Europe on a country scale. Trace element and country-specific impact scores were calculated from the product of the total mass of a trace element emitted from OW applied on agricultural land in a given country (mtotal) and the areaweighted comparative toxicity potential (CTP) for the trace element and the target country.…”

“…Despite this marked variability in grid-specific CTP, the country-specific impact scores were closely correlated with mtotal rather than with the area-weighted CTP. Sydow et al (2018) attributed the relatively small effect of CTP on the impact scores to the area weighting of grid-specific CTP at the country scale, suggesting that OW, and hence trace elements, are homogeneously applied on agricultural surface areas.…”