Abstract
Regulatory assessment of lead (Pb) in contaminated soils is still expressed primarily as total Pb concentrations in soil. In this study, we estimated effective concentrations (ECx) of Pb to Cucumis sativa L. (cucumber) focusing primarily on pore-water Pb data from 10 different soils after 12 weeks ageing. Phytotoxicity expressed in terms of Pb2+ was observed to occur in the nanomolar range in neutral to alkaline soils (EC50 values 90 to 853 nM) and micromolar levels for acidic soils (EC50 values 7.35 to 9.66 μM). Internal Pb concentrations relating to toxicity (PT50) in roots and shoots also decreased with increasing pore-water pH (R 2 = 0.52 to 0.53). From a series of dose-response studies, we developed transfer functions predicting Pb uptake in C. sativa and we validated these functions with long-term Pb contaminated soils. The significant independent parameters were pore-water Pb2+ and dissolved Pb plus dissolved organic carbon (DOC). The observed RMSE for the Pb-DOC model and Pb2+ were 2.6 and 8.8, respectively. The Pb-DOC model tended to under-predict Pb, whilst Pb2+ tended to over-predict accumulation despite reasonable RMSE values. Further validation is needed in soils with higher pore-water Pb solubility.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC CARE Pty Ltd) for providing fund for this study. In addition, we would like to thank Mr. Ramkrishna Nirola and Ms. Sedigheh Abbasi for their valuable assistance in soil sampling.
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Kader, M., Lamb, D.T., Mahbub, K.R. et al. Predicting plant uptake and toxicity of lead (Pb) in long-term contaminated soils from derived transfer functions. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 15460–15470 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-6696-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-6696-z