Soil and vegetation pollution from an abandoned mining area situated in Hunedoara County, Romania

Abstract

The soils situated near the abandoned mines are highly polluted with metals due to the discharge and dispersion of mine waste into nearby air, water (surface and groundwater) and soil. Heavy metals may be transferred to humans through ingestion, inhalation or dermal absorption and can produce serious health problems affect the nervous, endocrine and immune systems, hematopoietic function and cellular metabolism. This paper investigates the presence of metallic elements from fourteen soil samples (seven sampling points) and thirty-six vegetation samples (different types of leaves, plants, roots and tree barks). The samples were collected from six different sites located in an abandoned mining area and from a point (blank sample) located 5 km in the SV direction of the quarry. The results obtained for soil samples show an overrun of the alert and / or intervention threshold for the following metals: arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, copper, manganese, nickel, lead and zinc. The analytical investigation for vegetation samples indicated that concentration for calcium, magnesium, cadmium, chromium, manganese, nickel, lead, zinc were situated over the normal range in some samples. The analytical investigations were performed by optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The study’s conclusion indicates that, as result of soil acidic pH and high mobility of some metals, metallic elements migrate from soil to vegetation.