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

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.