Chemical factors of soil pollution in Taganrog as population health risk factors

Our research goal was to perform a hygienic assessment of soil pollution with chemicals on areas aimed for housing and recreation zones in Taganrog, Rostov region. Due to the fact that surface layer of city soils is an open dynamic system which is tightly connected to atmosphere and hydrosphere we treated pollutants content in soils as indicators of territory anthropogenic transformation and technogenic load on population. We used atomic-adsorption spectrophotometry to detect heavy metals and highly efficient liquid chromatography to detect 3,4-benzpyrene content. The results comprise 660 examined soil samples taken from 19 monitoring points; they were examined to detect 7 pollutants content (lead, zinc, copper, nickel, cadmium, chromium, and mercury) over 2008-2015; 144 samples were examined to detect 3,4-benzpyrene content over 2013-2015. We determined that priority pollutants among detected metals were zinc and lead; their content in city soils amounted up to 5.91 and 1.95 maximum permissible concentration. Complex indicator of city soils contamination varied from 1.61 to 2.02, long-term average annual value being 1.83. 3,4-benzpyrene was confirmed to be a substantial risk factor for population health as its concentrations exceeded maximum allowable values in 65.28 % of examined soil samples at average and maximum concentrations (2.45 and 38.05 MPC correspondingly). We recommend to include this chemical into systematic environmental quality monitoring. We detected regional peculiarities of soil pollution with chemicals on city territories aimed for housing, territories of pre-school children facilities, and recreation zones.