• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.456-464
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• 2010

Recently, heavy metals contamination of the agricultural soil and crops surrounding mining areas has been identified as one of the most serious environmental problems in South Korea. The Ministry of the Environment in Korea conducted a Preliminary National Environmental Health Survey (PNEHS) in abandoned metal mines in 2007. The priority for a subsequent detailed examination was ranked from the results of PNEHS. The studied mine which was ranked as being of the highest priority is located in the midwestern part of Korea and was operated from 1911 to 1985. In this study, the contamination levels of the heavy metals in the abandoned metal mine were investigated. From the results, the average daily dose (ADD), target hazard quotient (THQ) and target cancer risk of the heavy metals were evaluated. The concentration of arsenic (As) in all of the tailings from the mine was higher than its countermeasure standard of Korea. In particular, the highest concentration of As, 330 mg/kg, was up to 15 times higher than its countermeasure standard. The average concentration of As in agricultural soils was higher than the warning standard of Korea, and higher than its countermeasure standard at six sites. The average concentrations of the analyzed heavy metals in agricultural soil were below the warning standard, but concentrations of cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) at 4 sites were higher than its warning standard. The average concentration of As in surface water exceeded the warning standard of Korea. The value of the THQ of As for the tailings was higher than the health protection standard 1. The value of THQ of As for the farmlands was lower than the standard, while the hazard index (HI) of As was higher than the standard. The value of target cancer risk (TCR) of As, $6.44{\times}10^{-4}$, were higher than the health protection standard of a lifetime risk for TCR at $1{\times}10^{-6}$. This suggests that the residents around the metal mines are exposed to As pollution with a carcinogenic risk.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.626-634
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• 2005

The objectives of this study was to assess pollution level and contamination status on tailings and soil in the vicinity of four disused metal mines in Kangwon province. As the result of total metal concentrations analysis, the pollution degree of tailings and soil decreased in the order of Wondong > Second Yeonhwa > Sinyemi ${\fallingdotseq}$ Sangdong mines. Total metal concentrations of mine tailings in this study were $1.2{\sim}78.2$ and $1.1{\sim}80.6$ times higher than those in the background soil and the tolerable levels suggested by Kloke, respectively. From these results, we found that tailings served as contamination source of nearby soil. According to sequential extraction of metals, large proportion of heavy metals in all mine tailings existed in the form of a residual fraction, and heavy metals in non-residual form was mainly associated with Fe-Mn oxide fraction and sulfidic-organic fraction. Fe-Mn oxide fraction and sulfidic-organic fraction of heavy metals may be released into and contaminated the nearby environment under the oxidation or reduction condition in long-term. In particular, the proportions of the exchangeable and carbonate fraction of Cd in mine tailings from Second Yeonhwa mine were relatively high. This suggests that Cd may be easily released into and contaminated the nearby environment in the near time. Concentrations of heavy metals in mine tailings and the nearby soil exceeded the standard (agricultural area) of Soil Environment Conservation Law. So it was thought that remediation for mine tailings and the nearby soil is needed. The pollution indices of the samples in this study were for higher than 1.0 and the pollution degree was very serious. Priority remediation site for these mines was Wondong. As Results of danger indices, it was showed that exchangeable form in Wondong and Fe-Mn oxide form in the rest mines should be removed preferentially.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.331-341
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• 2023

When creating a soil contamination map using geostatistical techniques, there are various sources that can affect prediction errors. In this study, a grid-based soil contamination map was created from the sampling data of heavy metal concentrations in soil in abandoned mine areas using Ordinary Kriging. Five factors that were judged to affect the prediction error of the soil contamination map were selected, and the variation of the root mean squared error (RMSE) between the predicted value and the actual value was analyzed based on the Leave-one-out technique. Then, using a machine learning algorithm, derived the top three factors affecting the RMSE. As a result, it was analyzed that Variogram Model, Minimum Neighbors, and Anisotropy factors have the largest impact on RMSE in the Standard interpolation. For the variogram models, the Spherical model showed the lowest RMSE, while the Minimum Neighbors had the lowest value at 3 and then increased as the value increased. In the case of Anisotropy, it was found to be more appropriate not to consider anisotropy. In this study, through the combined use of geostatistics and machine learning, it was possible to create a highly reliable soil contamination map at the local scale, and to identify which factors have a significant impact when interpolating a small amount of soil heavy metal data.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.13-28
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• 2019

This study analyzed precipitation environment, heavy metal contamination, and mineral composition of white, reddish brown and mixed precipitates occurring at the Osip stream drainage, Gangwondo. Furthermore, spectral characteristics of the precipitates associated with heavy metal contamination and mineral composition was investigated based on spectroscopic analysis. The pH range of the precipitates was 4.43-6.91 for white precipitates, 7.74-7.94 for reddish brown precipitates, and 7.59-7.9 for the mixed precipitates, respectively. XRF analysis revealed that these precipitates were contaminated with Ni, Cu, Zn, and As. The white precipitates showed high Al concentration compared to reddish brown precipitates as much as 3.3 times, and the reddish brown precipitates showed high Fe concentration compared to white precipitates as much as 15 times. XRD analysis identified that the mineral composition of the white participates was aluminocoquimbite, gibbsite, quartz, saponite, and illite, and that of reddish brown precipitates was aluminum isopropoxide, kaolinite, goethite, dolomite, pyrophyllite, magnetite, quartz, calcite, pyrope. The mineral composition of the mixed precipitates was quartz, albite, and calcite. The spectral characteristics of the precipitates was manifested by gibbsite, saponite, illite for white precipitates, goethite, kaolinite, pyrophyllite for reddish brown precipitates, and albite for the mixed precipitates, respectively. The spectral reflectance of the precipitates decreased with increase in heavy metal contamination, and absorption depth of the precipitates indicated that the heavy metal ions were adsorbed to saponite and illite for white precipitates, and goethite and magnetite for reddish brown precipitates.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.44-52
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• 2007

Contaminated sediments more than 30 million/$m^3$ is generated from dredging work for harbours and coastal maintenance in Korea. Approximately 300 million/$m^3$ of sediments is dredged to deepen harbours and shipping lanes in US and of which $3{\sim}12million/m^3$ is highly contaminated. Although much is known about technologies for the remediation of heavy metal contaminated soil, much less is known about the treatment of contaminated sediment. In general, negatively charged fine particles will migrate towards positively charged system of electrodes under the influence of electrophoresis. However, the electrically induced migration of colloidal particles contaminated with heavy metals may be hindered by the positively charged heavy metal contaminants adsorbed onto the soil surfaces depending on the contamination level. This paper demonstrates settling behaviour of clayey soil by comparison with electrophoretic particle movement under the effects of heavy metal contamination, applied electric field strength, and its polarity changed by the electrode configuration.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 2004

Pollution reduction and/or control technology becomes one of the pressing post-semiconductor research field to lead an advanced industrial structure. Soil/groundwater remediation techniques may act as a core technology which will create many demands on pollution reduction areas. A plenty numbers of abandoned metal mines were left without any remediation action in Korea, and it may be potential sources of heavy metal and As contamination in the ecosystem. In order to bring this soil contamination to a settlement, the emerging soil/groundwater remediation techniques should be introduced. Main research topics in the United States and Europe move towards the clean remediation technology without any secondary impact and the feasible application of developing technique into the field scale study. With these advantages, several soil/groundwater techniques such as electrokinetic soil processing, permeable reactive barrier, stabilization/solidification, biosorption, soil flushing with biosurfactant, bioleaching and phytoremediation will be summarized in this paper.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.31-39
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• 2017

The primary purpose of this research is to understand those elements that define heavy metals contamination and to propose a novel assessment method based on principal component analysis (PCA) in the Yangping River region of Lingbao City, China. This paper makes detailed calculations regarding such factors the single-factor assessment ($P_i$) and Nemerow's multi-factor index ($P_N$) of heavy metals found in the surface water of the Yangping River. The maximum values of $P_i$ (Cd) and $P_i$ (Pb) were determined to be 892.000 and 113.800 respectively. The maximum value of $P_N$ was calculated to be 639.836. The results of Pearson's correlation analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, and PCA indicated heavy metal groupings as follows: Cu, Pb, Zn and As, Hg, Cd. The PCA-based pollution index ($P_{an}$) of samplings was subsequently calculated. The relative coefficient square was valued at 0.996 between $P_{an}$ and $P_N$, which indicated that $P_{an}$ is able to serve as a new heavy metal pollution index; not only this index able to eliminate the influence of the maximum value of $P_i$, but further, this index contains the principal component elements needed to evaluate heavy metal pollution levels.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.524-530
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• 2016

Agricultural soils near or around industrial complexes can contain a certain amount of heavy metals that readily enter the food chain and negatively affect human health. Therefore, we conducted the study to investigate the distribution of selected heavy metals, including arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), and zinc (Zn), in farm-land soils around fifteen industrial complexes in the southwestern provinces, Korea. The concentrations of heavy metals in the soil samples were determined by the pseudo-total aqua regia (3 HCl : $1HNO_3$) digestion procedure. The heavy metal concentrations in most soils examined did not exceed the levels of Soil Contamination Warning Standard (SCWS) for agricultural lands (Region 1) presented in Soil Environment Conservation Law (SECL) established by Ministry of Environment (MOE), Korea. However, only one sampling site showed higher As amount ($27.1mg\;kg^{-1}$) than the SCWS level of As ($25mg\;kg^{-1}$). Pollution index (PI) for heavy metals did not exceed 1.0. The PI values were significantly positively correlated (p < 0.01) with the heavy metal concentrations. In particular, the values of correlation coefficient between the Cd and Pb concentrations and the PI values were higher than those estimated from other combinations, and thus the amounts of Cd and Pb in the agricultural soils highly affected the PI values for the heavy metals.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.56-64
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• 2013

After the law has been enacted for the prevention and recovery of mining damage in 2005, efforts of remediation have been started to recover heavy metal contaminated soils in agricultural land near mining sites. As part of an effort, the upper part of cultivation layer has been treated through covering up with clean soil, but the heavy metal contamination could be still spreaded to the surrounding areas because heavy metals may be remained in the lower part of cultivation layers. In this study, the most frequently occurring arsenic (As) contamination was selected to study in agricultural land nearby an abandoned metal mining site. We applied separation technologies considering the differences in the physical characteristics of soil particles (particle size, density, magnetic properties, hydrophobicity, etc.). Based on physical and chemical properties of arsenic (As) containing particles in agricultural lands nearby mining sites, we applied sieve separation, specific gravity separation, magnetic separation, and flotation separation to remove arsenic (As)-containing particles in the contaminated soil. Results of this study show that the removal efficiency of arsenic (As) were higher in the order of the magnetic separation, flotation separation, specific gravity separation and sieve separation.

• 한국도로학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.665-668
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• 2009