A street deposit sampling method for metal and hydrocarbon contamination assessment

Urban surface contamination, by atmospheric deposits as well as human activities, is a major concern for urban pollution management. Besides coarse street deposits which are clearly perceived and easily removed, suspended solid (SS) surface loads and contamination by heavy metals and hydrocarbons are rarely assessed although they could be of major importance with regards to combined or separate server overflow (CSO and SSO) impacts. Both dry and wet vacuum sampling procedures have been first compared, in the laboratory, using dry and sieved clay or street deposits. Then the wet vacuum sampling procedure has been refined, coupling the injection of water and the hand-brushing of the surface prior to its vacuum cleaning, and evaluated on a car parking area close to the University. Finally this procedure has been assessed in Béarn Street within the 'Le Marais' district in Paris centre, and 34 samples have been analysed for metal and eight for aromatic hydrocarbon contamination. Heavy metal concentrations (0.1-1.7 g kg-1 dry wt. Cu, 0.9-6.1 g kg-1 dry wt. Pb and 1.5-4.6 g kg-1 dry wt. Zn) within street deposit samples collected in Paris centre, indicate a high contamination, especially for copper and zinc, as compared to reported data. Total polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are in the 3-11 mg kg-1 dry wt. range, thus approximately 10 times less contaminated than dry atmospheric deposits. This paper presents data obtained and discusses the difficulties encountered when sampling street deposits in busy areas of a city like Paris. The water jet street cleaning procedure used by Paris city workers was tested for its efficiency, by comparison of surface loads before and after the cleaning procedure. Although solids cleaning efficiency is highly variable (20-65%) and somewhat higher for particles larger than 100 microns, particulate metal cleaning efficiency is even more variable (0-75%) and particulate PAHs appear not to be significantly removed.