Metal pollution environmental impact

Accumulation of metals in the core sampled in the northern Lagoon, relative to the industrial core, are about 5 times lower for mercury and comparable for the other two metals. Metals reaching this area of the Lagoon are carried by fresh water streams from the basin. A very high number of small productions, whose environmental impact has not yet been adequately evaluated, contribute to this pollution. 

Spurgeon, D.J., SR. Hopkin, and D.T. Jones. 1994. Effects of cadmium, copper, lead and zinc on growth, reproduction and survival of the earthworm Eiseniafetida (Savigny) assessing the environmental impact of point-source metal contamination in terrestrial ecosystems. Environ. Pollut. 84 123-130. 

Barman, S.C. and S.K. Bhargava. 1997. Accumulation of heavy metals in soil and plants in industrially polluted fields. Pages 289-314 in P.N. Cheremisinoff (ed.). Ecological Issues and Environmental Impact Assessment. Gulf Publishing Company, Houston, TX. 

Sudhakar, G., Jyothi, B. Venkateswarlu, V. (1991). Metal pollution and its impact on algae in flowing waters in India. Archives of Environmental Contamination andToxicology, 21, 556-66. 

Salomons W. and Forstner U. (1980) Trace metal analysis on polluted sediments II. Evaluation of environmental impact. Environ. Technol. Lett. 1, 506—517. 

Huang, P. M., and Germida. J. J. (2002). Chemical and biological process in the rhizosphere metal pollutants. In Interactions Between Soil Particles and Microorganisms Impact on Terrestrial Ecosystem, ed. Huang, P. M. Bollag, J.-M., and Senesi, N., lUPAC Series on Analytical and Physical Chemistry of Environmental Systems, Vol. 8, Wiley, Chichester, West Sussex, England, 381-438. 

The widespread use of metals for different kinds of application (e.g., pigments, coatings, alloys, electronic equipment) leads to the fact that some of the utilized metals (or their compounds) end up in wastes. Metals in wastes can cause severe environmental impacts, particularly with respect to ground-water pollution. 

Tiller, K.G., McLaughlin, M.J., Roberts, A.H.C., 2000. Environmental impacts of heavy metals in agroecosystems and amelioration strategies in Oceania. In Huang, P.M., Iskander, l.K. (Eds.) Soils and Groundwater Pollution and Remediation. CRC Press, Boca Raton, PL, pp. 1 1. 

Potential risks and the adverse impact of metallic pollutants in the air have been evaluated in many different respeets (e.g., Ariane et al. 2001). In re-eognition of the fact that the atmosphere ean serve as a major medium to transfer most particle bound metals across different environmental reservoirs, enormous efforts have been directed towards a routine monitoring of diverse airborne metal species. Information derived from such efforts helps us determine the direction of emission control strategies, either in the form of various technical applications or through air quality regulations and related policies. In fact, more extreme measures to cope with trace metal pollution were found to involve various bans on the use of certain raw materials or products (e.g., EPSMA 2003). 

In an effort to explore the status of metal pollution under diverse environmental conditions, we have been involved in a number of projects to assess the spatial and temporal distribution of the major metallic components on the Korean peninsula such as Pb (Kim 2007a), Cd (Kim 2007b), Cr (Nguyen and Kim 2008), and Mn (Myeong et al. in press). In light of the potential impacts of these hazardous metal species, their concentration data have been monitored routinely at monthly intervals in parallel at 13 major cities with different source characteristics. As these measurements have been conducted over an extended period from 1991 to 2006, a comprehensive evaluation of each metal data set was made to allow in-depth descriptions of their distribution patterns. 

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