Heavy metal contaminations of urban soils in Ostrava, Czech Republic: assessment of metal pollution and using principal component analysis

Abstract

This study investigates the status of heavy metals contaminations in urban soils of Ostrava in the Czech Republic. The main aim of this study was determination of concentration of Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, Mn, V and Hg, assessment of contamination levels of metals in urban soils and verification of potential source of metals contamination. Soil samples were collected from soil layer of 20 cm and metals were determined by atomic spectroscopy methods (F AAS, GF AAS, AMA 254). It was concluded that metals concentrations in studied soils increased in the following order: Hg < Cd < Cu < Pb < V < Zn < Mn, with mean values of Hg (0.17 mg/kg), Cd (0.20 mg/kg), Pb (66.93 mg/kg), Zn (209.51 mg/kg), Cu (38.49 mg/kg), V (105.18 mg/kg) and Mn (1349.85 mg/kg). The results obtained from assessment of metals pollution by means of index of geoaccumulation (I geo ), enrichment factor (EF), contamination factor (CF), pollution load index (PLI), pollution index (PI) and integrated pollution index (IPI) confirmed that urban soils were contaminated in the range from moderately through strongly polluted up to highly contaminated soils. Multivariate statistics approach (Principal Component Analysis) was adopted for the data treatment for identification of contamination sources. This study verified that soil contamination was the result of the industrial processing that occurred in the studied area. All of these data confirmed that Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, Mn, V and Hg come from anthropogenic activities, especially from industrial processes.