hrvatski

Monitoring of trace metals in urban soils for healthier city

Urban soil environment is subjected to pollution through numerous pathways: atmospheric deposition from traffic and industry, waste deposits, heating and many more. Specific and highly diversified land use in urban area makes the monitoring of soil quality extremely complex program. Accumulation of toxic substances in soils, including trace metals, can directly influence public health. Metals are chemically very reactive in the environment, which results in their mobility and bioavailability to living organisms. People can be exposed to high levels of toxic metals by breathing air, drinking water, or eating food that contains them produced in widely spread urban gardens Beside anthropogenic sources, trace metals can be also found in the parent material from which the soils developed. Whether the said inputs will become toxic and to what degree mobile depends on a number of factors: specific chemical and physical trace metal characteristics, soil type, land use, geomorphological characteristics within the soil type and exposure to emission sources. Processes that control the mobility, transformation and toxicity of metals in soil are of special importance in the soil root developing zone – the rhizosphere. For this reason, there is a considerable interest in understanding trace metals behaviour in soil, with special emphasis on the way they build-up in soil and on processes of by which plants take up metals. City of Zagreb recognized the importance of monitoring soil quality as an important tool in estimating the hazards to the vital roles of urban ecosystem, and also to collect relevant data needed for developing quality standards for policy makers as well as for citizens and citizen associations. Soil geochemistry survey of City of Zagreb has triggered several studies so far that resulted in action by the city. The ongoing program is aimed to provide a database for environmental health risk evaluation for the Croatian capital.

anthropogenic sources, pollution, trace metals

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