Characteristics of Natural and Urban Soils - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 97

Table 2.1 Material compositions of heaps and fills

Main component group Component group Examples

Construction rubble Housing/industrial debris Brick, mortar, concrete,

plaster

Asphalt debris Bitumen and tar asphalt

Slag Iron works Blast furnace slag, sand and

pumice of iron works

Steel works Slag of steel smelting

furnace

Heavy metal works Lead slag, copper slag, zinc

slag

Foundry Slag and sand of foundry

Ashes Hard coal-fired and lignite

coal-fired power station

Fly ash, bottom ash

Garbage incinerator Fly ash, bottom ash

Mining waste Coal mining waste Coal gangue

Ore mining waste Ore gangue

Refuse Household refuse Glass, metal, paper,

ceramics, organic
garbage, wood, bulky
refuse

Industrial refuse Dross, cinders, salt slag,

other specific waste of
industrial processes

Sludge Sewage and wastewater

works

Sewage sludge

Harbor and river dredging Harbor and river sludge

Solution mining Ore and salt mining sludge

Meuser ( 1996 )

The use of such materials as mono-substrates can be supposed to be relatively
rare. In most of the cases, mixtures of technogenic and natural materials are typical
for deposited soils. Therefore, deposited soils with a high material heterogeneity
and lithologic discontinuity, which reveal great vertical and spatial variability, make
survey and sampling difficult.

2.2 Inherited Geochemistry

This section deals with abundances and the sometimes elevated concentrations of
trace elements in natural materials (Krauskopf 1967 ; Reimann and De Caritat 1998 )
that may be erroneously considered to be contaminated sites. In the great majority of
cases where “unusually” high concentrations of heavy metals have been found, their
solubility and mobility are extremely low so that ecological impacts are negligible.
In some cases, however, such as the high nickel concentration in soils formed on