Effect of Non-Vehicular Sources on Heavy Metal Concentrations of Roadside Soils

Soils along highway environments typically contain high concentrations of heavy metals because of non-point contamination sources, most commonly vehicle exhaust and wear of vehicle parts. Pb, Zn, Cu, Cr, Sb, Ba and Ra concentrations of soils along roadways with very low traffic volumes in a rural portion of San Patricio County, Texas, have been studied in order to distinguish the effects of a point source (an industrial waste landfill) from the effects of traffic. The highest concentrations of Zn, Cr, Sb, Ba and Ra were detected in soils along the access road to the landfill. The association of high Ba values with high Ra values suggests that the most probable sources of this contamination were oilfield waste from storage tank bottoms, which were disposed of in landfill waste pits and were also spread over roads within the landfill to decrease dust. Outside the landfill along a different roadway, a second contamination area which was characterized by very high Ba but low Sb and Ra concentrations compared to background values, has been detected. Drilling mud spill is the most probable source of this contamination. The contaminations caused by these two point sources differ from typical vehicle-sourced contamination in two ways: their areal extent was limited and contaminants were not typical for highway environments (like Ba and Ra). Like vehicular contamination, however, these areas were confined to the immediate vicinity of the roadways. Another difference is that Pb in most vehicle-contaminated areas is strongly bound to the soil constituents, mostly organic matter, whereas the point source Pb was found to be readily exchangeable and to have no association with organic matter.