“Soil Pollution Hazardous to Environment”: A case study on the chemical composition and correlation to automobile traffic of the roadside soil of Jeddah city, Saudi Arabia
There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Soil samples from different roads in Jeddah city were collected and analyzed for their
elemental composition. The effects of traffic conditions were critically investigated
to reflect the effect of the heavy and light traffic on the soil composition. Samples
were analyzed for K, As, Co, Cr, Ni, Pb, Sb, V, and Zn. The results revealed great
dependence of lead and zinc contents on traffic conditions. The lead content lies
in the range 0.3-104.8+/-0.003 mg/kg for the samples of high traffic conditions and
0.3+/-0.0mg/kg being for the sample with no traffic activity, whereas 104.8+/-0.003
mg/kg was for the one of the most used highways area in Jeddah city. Zinc level lies
in the range 56.59+/-0.003-456.93+/-0.06 mg/kg which is quite close to lead pattern.
The high zinc concentration was found along the main turn roads. The high zinc content
in tested soil samples may come from traffic sources, especially vehicle tires. Concentrations
of other elements showed little dependence on traffic conditions.