Street Dust: Source and Sink of Heavy Metals To Urban Environment

Air-transferred solid material accumulated for 40 years in different places in an urban area, Grenoble city, France. An appropriate fractionation procedure allowed to separate: 1) a coarse inorganic fraction, 2) a coarse organic fraction, 3) a slowly depositing organo-clay fraction and 4) very fine particles. The composition of each fraction was determined for 20 elements and for isotopic lead signature. The organo-clay fraction was especially rich in Ag, Cd, Co, Cr, Ni and Ti. The sand fraction showed very high concentrations specifically in Cu, Pb and Fe. In contrast, Cd and Zn were mainly accumulated in the coarse organic fraction. The SEM-EDX study of the coarse inorganic fraction showed the presence of red particles associating Pb and Fe, black particles rich in Cu and typical fly ashes originating mostly from iron industry. This sand fraction is suspected to contribute to the contamination of the organo-clay fraction through adsorption. The Pb-Fe contamination likely originates from the neighbouring road surface contaminated by car traffic for several decades. The 206Pb/207Pb ratio showed that these street dust samples may contain up to 50% of lead originated from leaded gasoline additives, twelve years after their prohibition. All these features clearly differ from the composition found for the deposit on tree bark in the same place. These results demonstrate that the deposition over several decades is a very complex phenomenon which requires multi-techniques investigations to be understood thoroughly. They also show that large dense particles which can only be transported on a limited distance by high magnitude events may play a major role in the long-term contamination of urban soils.