Human health risk assessment: a case study of heavy metal contamination of garden soils in Szeged

Abstract

The soils of the big cities, owing to the various anthropogenic activities, can be contaminated byheavy metals. The surroundings of the roads with heavy traffic as significant metal emitter source canbe contaminated by heavy metals. The hobby gardens and the vegetable gardens directly along roadscan be potential risky for people since unknown amount of heavy metals can be accumulated intoorganization of local residents due to consumption of vegetables and fruits grown in their own garden.Most metals are well-known to have toxic characters but we have known little what extent thesemetals exert influence on people living directly along road with busy traffic. During our research,metal contamination has been investigated in the gardens near the roads with heavy traffic in Szegedby measuring of metal contents in soil and plants samples. Enrichment factor has been calculated withthe help of control soil samples far from roads having heavily traffic. Besides determination of themetal content of soil and plant samples, soil properties basically influencing on metal mobility hasbeen examined in order to characterize the buffering capacity of the studied soils. The health riskquotients have also been determined to evaluate human health risk of the contaminated soils