Environmental magnetism : heavy metal concentrations in soils as a function of magnetic materials content

Abstract EN

The magnetic materials contained in the urban soil or roadside soils have become increasingly important as they could serve as good adsorbent media for the heavy metals such as Co, Cr, Cd, Pb, Zn and Ni.

Usually, Fe-Oxides or hydroxides such as the magnetite, hematite and goethite are contained in the soil originated through natural or anthropogenic processes. The results obtained in this investigation indicate the positive correlation between magnetic materials content and the heavy metals concentrations; and show that magnetite (Fe3O4) is the main magnetic mineral phase, which might be attributed to various anthropogenic sources mainly the traffic related activities.

Recently, this finding has an important implication in monitoring the urban and roadside soil heavy metal pollution, which is developed into new concept called the environmental magnetism.