International audienceWe report on lead and arsenic soil pollution in abandoned industrial poles to the southof Marseille, France, where several lead production plants were active until the 1920's. Sincethis area is currently considered as building plot for residential districts, the detection of soilpollution is of great public interest. Here, a number of samples were collected andsubsequently investigated by calibration-free laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. It wasshown that the concentration of both lead and arsenic within the collected samples isdrastically elevated in comparison to the particular natural content as reported in literature.Since the applied method does not require any standards for calibration, it is easy to use inorder to determine local soil pollution as a basis for soil clean up procedures
