An approach to studying heavy metal pollution caused by modern city development in Nanjing, China

 Nanjing is currently one of the fastest developing regions in terms of construction and economy in China. Heavy metal pollution is becoming more serious with the expansion of production and life scales. Four environmental units (highway, refinery, rubbish dumps associated with human daily life, and shoal of the Yangtse River) were selected from the region according to the geneses of the pollution to study and evaluate the distribution and mechanism of the contamination, the speciations of the polluting elements, and the geneses of the pollution in the soils and sediments. The purposes of the study are to understand generally the current situation and the cause of the pollution, and to provide a scientific basis to prevent and solve the pollution problem. At the same time, it would be helpful to probe the effective way of studying heavy metal pollution resulting from the development of modern cities and to accumulate data. It is indicated by the study that the heavy metals contained in the soil of the environmental unit of the highway are Pb, Co and Cr; in the soil of the refinery Cr, V, Pb, Ni, and Co; in the soil of the rubbish plot Co, Cu, and Sb; in the sediments of the shoal Pb, Co, Cu, and Ni. Fe-Mn oxide is given the first place to the speciations in polluting heavy metals transmitted by air. Carbonate is more in speciations of polluting heavy metals transmitted by water than in speciations of the metals transmitted by air. In the ten elements studied, Pb is most directly poisonous to the plants in the region; Co and Cu are the next, and Ni is the least. Heavy metal pollution has been occurring in the soils and sediments of the region and the situation will worsen if some effective measures are not taken. Received: 18 October 1997 · Accepted: 3 February 1998