Environmental Contamination Assessment of the Surroundings of the ex-Šibenik's Ferro-manganese Smelter, Croatia

Abstract

The objective of this study was chemical and radiological characterization of soil samples affected by the dust emission and slag dumping from ferro-manganese smelter as well as uptake of metals by vegetation growing on that soil. Iron was the main component of metallurgical slag deposited near the smelter. Slag material was highly enriched in Zn, Cr, Cu, Co, and Pb. V and Cr were enriched in the soil taken near the smelter approximately by a factor of two, Pb and Cu were increased fivefold whereas the mean content of Mn was about 130 times higher than the levels in background soil samples. Activities of agricultural soil samples were typical for the soil developed on late Cretaceous carbonate surface. ⁴⁰K, ²³²Th, and ¹³⁷Cs showed somewhat lower activities in background soil compared to the soil taken near the smelter while the opposite was found for ²²⁶Ra and ²³⁸U. Plot of factor 1 against factor 2, obtained by Principal component analysis, showed perfect separation of the samples taken in the vicinity of the smelter, slag material, and normal background agricultural soil. Perfect correlation (Canonical R = 0.992) was obtained between chemical composition of soil and vegetation samples taken from the same spots. The content of Mn was approximately 36 times higher in vegetation taken from the vicinity of the smelter compared to the background values.

Keywords:

• Ferro-manganese smelter
• Heavy metals
• Enrichment factors
• Soil
• Vegetation