An appraisal of soil diffuse contamination in an industrial district in northern Italy

Soil diffuse contamination is one the major soil threats, especially in regions with a high population density and strong industrialization. In this work agricultural, natural, and periurban soils of an Italian Province (858 km(2)) were sampled and analyzed. Overall, 140 samples were taken at two depths and analyzed for 10 trace elements, 13 rare earth elements and for organic contaminants (PCBs, PCDDs and PAHs). The aim of this work was to obtain an appraisal of soil diffuse contamination in a large Italian Province by applying and validating available tools to quantify background values and evaluate the intensity of contamination. Data were processed, background values estimated, and enrichment and contamination factors calculated. For some contaminants the results allowed a discrimination between natural or anthropic-derived contaminants. Some contaminants revealed clear trends of enrichment in function of the land use (in particular for periurban soils). REEs were found to mostly derive from parent material. The results obtained in this study show the importance of merging the quantification of contaminants with the elaboration of indices of contamination. These require an accurate quantification of background values to be able to discriminate the anthropic contribution. Enrichment factor resulted to be more accurate than contamination factor but it cannot be applied to organic contaminants and requires a careful selection of the reference element to be adopted. This study revealed that some contaminants - Sb, Sn, Pb, and organic contaminants - can be used as tracers of diffuse contamination, and should be therefore always included in similar studies.