EVALUATION OF SOIL HEAVY METAL POLLUTION IN THE ZLATNA REGION

Soil contamination is a major problem not only at European but also at international level through the explosive development of the industry which led to the creation and proliferation of a wide and varied number of chemical compounds hazardous to the environment. Soil heavy metals contamination is the most dangerous pollution because those metals do not degrade like organic pollutants, their residence time in the soil being of thousands of years. The excess of heavy metals in soil can threaten the health of animals and humans, due to food chain transfer. Zlatna is a town located in the Alba county, at 35 km from the Alba Iulia city. The Ampoi river connects the two cities. The main heavy metals pollution sources in the area of Zlatna were the mining and mineral processing activities. The results show exceedance especially in the Zlatna town of lead content (3500 mg/kg), copper (12 970 mg/kg), zinc (3997 mg/kg) and arsenic (850 mg/kg). Also, they were passing in the alert or intervention threshold values for the Chemes village (6955 mg/kg - Cu) and arsenic in the most localities.