Heavy Metals Soil Pollution in Some Urban Location from Romania - Highway and Urban Environment - page 322

Iassy is located in the extreme eastern part of the country, in a hilly zone, having
340,000 inhabitants and 93.9 km 2 of surface area. The urban soils, belonging to Urbic
and Mixic Entiantrosols, have been derived from natural soils from Chernozems or
alluvial soils types, some of them saline.
Baia Mare, located in the northeastern part of Romania, with over 140,000 inhabitants
and a surface area of about 35.73 km 2 , is a city well known for its complex sulphide ore
extraction and processing industry. The natural soils developed on the settlement are
Albic Luvisols and Brown Acid type, both being acid soils. Those strongly modified
zones have resulted in Urbic Mixic and Urbic-Alluvic Entiantrosols.

Abundance of Heavy Metals

Statistical parameters of the eights studied heavy metals from urban soils situated
lengthways the main streets of Bucharest, Iassy and Baia Mare cities (Tables 1
through 3 ) has revealed contiguous values for some chemical elements (Cd, Co, Cr,
Mn and Ni) and contrasting values for other (Cu, Pb, Zn). Marked differences
between the chemical elements Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn from Baia Mare soils, has been
recorded. Because of the presence of nonferrous ore processing industries, the con-
centration of these heavy metals in Baia Mare soils are much higher as compared
with those from Bucharest and Iassy. Thus, only arithmetic mean values of the Cu,
Pb and Zn contents in Baia Mare urban soils exceed the maximum allowable limits
for these elements by 1.6, 7.9 and almost 2.0 times, respectively.
Analysis of the medium content of the same chemical elements from Bucharest
and Iassy urban soils showed that the values, except those for Pb, are ranging below

Table 1 Statistical parameters of total heavy metal content (mg/kg) in urban soils of Bucharest
city (n = 87) situated lengthways of the main streets as compared to normal content (NC), maximum
allowable limits (MAL) and alarm threshold (AT) for a less sensible

Cd Co Cr Cu Mn Ni Pb Zn

Parameter a mg/kg

xmin 1.1 15 18 27 394 14 27 70
xmax 4.6 31 41 86 730 50 359 404
x 2.2 23 29 51 507 37 119 165
s 0.8 4 6 18 137 8 94 84
xg 2.1 23 27 50 501 38 108 143
Me 2.2 24 29 46 493 39 72 150
NC b 0.3 5 30 20 500 20 15 50
MAL c 3.0 50 100 100 50 100 300
AT d 5.0 100 300 250 2,000 200 250 700
a xmin - minimum value; xmax - maximum value; x - arithmetic mean; s - standard deviation;
xg - geometric mean.
b After [9] .
c After [10] .
c After Romanian order of Environment Ministry (no 756/1997) for soil pollution.