Ecological and Hygienic Assessment of Soils in Urban Ecosystems

Abstract

The purpose is an ecological and hygienic assessment of the urbocenoses soils in the Central Black Soil Region by the content of the highest priority heavy metals and arsenic. Materials and methods. Using the example of the Voronezh Region, 13 sites for sampling the upper layers of urbocenoses soils in the city of Voronezh were selected, as well as one protected area as comparison samples. The content of gross and mobile forms of heavy metals and arsenic was determined by the atomic absorption method. Results and discussion. The content of the main toxic elements (mercury, cadmium, lead, arsenic, nickel, zinc, cobalt, chromium and copper) in the soils of urbocenoses and protected areas of the city of Voronezh was studied, and their concentrations were compared with various world claras. The territories characterised by contamination of the upper layers of soils with certain elements are shown. It has been revealed that the most important infl uence on the state of soils of urbocenoses of Voronezh city is exerted by auto and railway transport, energy enterprises, as well as a number of industrial enterprises. Conclusions. The most signifi cant limiting indicator of the quality of the studied soils of urbocenoses was the content of mobile forms of copper – an excess of the maximum permissible standards for this indicator was found in 57 % of the studied samples, which can be associated with insuffi cient effi ciency of cleaning of emissions into the atmosphere of industrial enterprises and transport, as well as with low humanization of urbanized soils, and, as a result, low capacity for strong fi xation of metals.