• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.375-382
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• 1999

In order to investigate the contamination characteristics of the heavy metals in the mine tailings of abandoned gold mine and its surrounding agricultural soils, a sequential extraction procedure of increasing reactivity in the dissolution processes of the heavy metals(Cd, Cu, and Pb) which were associated with solid and/or solution phase in soils was attempted to partition into six particulate fractions : exchangeable, bound to carbonate, bound to Fe-Mn oxides, bound to organic matter, residual, and soluble. Among indigenous heavy metals in the mine tailings, Pb was the most abundant and Cu and Cd were followed by. Fractionation result of Pb obtained from the triplicate samples of the mine tailings were in the order of Fe-Mn oxide> Carbonate> Residual> Organic> Exchangeable> Soluble, while Wolgok series were Exchangeable > Fe-Mn oxide > Carbonate> Organic> Residual> Soluable. However the other heavy metals studied were not followed this trend. The fractionation results of mine tailing and agricultural soils demonstrated that different geochemical fractions were operationally defined by an extraction sequence that generally followed the order of decreasing solubility. Therefore potential mobility and bioavailability of heavy metals as toxic pollution sources can be evaluated when studying the pollution levels of heavy metals in soils.