Original scientific paper
Gardening Work and Heavy Metals in Urban Environment
Vincenzo D'Elia
Vittorio Lodi
Massimo Naldi
Gabriele Gherardi
Francesco S. Violante
Marta Bonparola
Roberto Badiello
Giovanni Battista Raffi
Abstract
Urban soil may be a source of occupational exposure to various pollutants in gardening and land cultivation. This paper presents data of a one-year follow-up of lead, cadmium, nickel, chromium, and vanadium in the environment of the city of Bologna. Samples of soil and leaves were collected at three locations; gardens from the inner-city high-traffic area, parks in moderatetraffic area, and parks in suburban, low-traffic area. The top and deeper layers of soil and leaves were mainly polluted by lead at all locations, which corresponded to the traffic density. Personal samplers recorded greater concentrations of airborne metals than did the area samplers but the values kept below the threshold limit established by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists for the working environment. Due to cumulative nature and interactive effects of toxic metals with other toxic and essential elements, long-term exposure to metals in the urban environment may be a health risk for occupationally exposed gardeners.
Keywords
atomic absorption spectrometry; cadmium; chromium; gardening; health risk; heavy metals; lead; nickel; occupational exposure; urban environment; vanadium
Hrčak ID:
2753
URI
Publication date:
9.9.1999.
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