Publication details
LEVELS AND FATE OF PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS IN MOUNTAIN SOILS
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Organohalogen Compounds |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Soil contamination adn decontamination incl. pesticides |
| Keywords | POPs; mountains; soil; fate; monitoring |
| Description | Soil plays an important role in the global fate and distribution of POPs. Detailed soil screening in the Czech Republic as a typical Central European country clearly differentiated between arable, grassland and forest soils, and showed that due to the global atmospheric transport, the mountain ecosystems reach higher contamination levels than those found in urban and industrial regions. For example, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDDs/Fs) concentrations were 20 times higher in mountain forests than those found in arable and grasslands soils. A high capacity of coniferous needles to scavenge and accumulate atmospheric pollutants from the gas phase, fine particle phase and wet deposition, together with transport to the soil with plant litter is partially responsible for these findings. A high accumulation potential of carbon-rich soils may also be an important factor. Here we present a long-term study where PCDDs/Fs were investigated in the range of mountain soils of various contamination levels over the span of twelve years. |
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