Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
There is general agreement that these metals decrease in concentration with depth
and with distance from the roadway [2] .
Roadside soils may be screened for all constituents of significance as a first step
in establishing soil quality criteria for protection of soil ecosystems. In this sense,
ICP/MS offers the capability to screen road soil samples for most elements in the
periodic table. The aim of this study was to identify traffic-related elements (TRE)
in the vicinity of both an old secondary road and a relatively new highway in
the north of Spain, in order to perform a preliminary study to know the traffic
impact on roadside soils and monitor the contribution of traffic to environmental
pollution and risk.
Experimental - Method
The study area is a countryside located in Biscay, northern Spain (43°19¢35.53¢ N
and 2°52¢20.39¢ W) near the city of Bilbao (Fig. 1 ). The first study area is a secondary
road which has borne a high traffic density until the new highway was built two
decades ago. Nowadays the medium traffic density of this older road is about 1,800
vehicles per day and 5.9% of these are of high tonnage [10] . The second one is a
modern highway which is parallel to the old road all along the course of the studied
area at 50 m of distance, separated by a stream. It bears most of the traffic in the
area and has a traffic density of about 28,200 vehicles per day, and 5.7% of them
are of high tonnage.
Fig. 1 Location of the study area in North Spain, next to the city of Bilbao (Biscay)
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