THE STATUS OF SOME SELECTED HEAVY METALS IN ROADSIDE SOILS OF BURSA PROVINCE, TURKEY

Nowadays, environmental pollution of heavy metals from automobiles has attained much attention. This was caused some heavy metal pollution in road side soils. In this research, the some selected heavy metals were studied along the taken road side soils under heavy traffic in northwestern Turkey. The aim of this research was carried out to determine the heavy metal pollution status of some agricultural lands along the one of major highways of Turkey. For this purpose, roadside surface soil samples were collected from 50 sites along the Bursa-Izmir highway and analyzed for cadmium, copper, lead, and zinc. Their concentrations and distributions were determined in this research. Lead concentration was the highest in the soils and ranged from 30.0 to 1210.0 mg/kg. Zinc concentration varied from 62.1 to 492.8 mg/kg and copper concentration ranged from 20.0 to 250.6 mg/kg. Cadmium concentration was the lowest in the soil and varied from 0.5 to 5.2 mg/kg. Overall, the levels of heavy metals in roadside soils were higher as compared to their natural background levels.