Abstract
The natural gas industry bears a certain contamination risk to human and biota due to, among others, mercury, arsenic, and naturally occurring radioactive material content in gas. We tracked multiple stabile metal(loid)s and radionuclides within the natural gas treatment plant Molve, Croatia, ecosystem during the last decade through a comprehensive monitoring of soil, earthworms, moss, livestock (blood, milk, hair, urine, and feces from cows), and wildlife animals (brain, muscle, liver, and kidney of European hare and pheasant). The level of mercury and other stable metal(loid)s has shown temporal variation, but without an obvious trend. The found spatial differences in soil and earthworms were based on the differing soil characteristics of the sampled locations and exceeded the maximal allowable concentration of arsenic and zinc for agricultural soil. The status of essential copper, selenium, and zinc in cows, hares, and pheasants inclined towards deficiency. The measured stable metal(loid) levels in soil and animal samples were generally in the same range of values reported in earlier decades from the same area or non-polluted areas across Europe. The consumption of local cow and game products (e.g., milk, meat) can be considered safe for human health, although game offal is advised to be avoided as a food item due to the low risk of lead and cadmium’s adverse effects. Although the activity concentrations of some radionuclides in moss were higher than reported for pristine areas, transfer from soil to moss was assessed as average (except for lead-210). Radiological risk to human and biota around the gas treatment plant Molve was estimated as negligible.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Ms. Jasminka Senčar, Mr. Mak Avdić, and Dr. Marko Šoštarić for their technical support and assistance in conducting radiological monitoring. We also acknowledge the skilful assistance of Mr. Mladen Komesar and Ms. Snježana Mataušić in metal(loid) quantification and Mr. Makso Herman for language editing. INA, d.d. is acknowledged for a complete and active cooperation during sampling and the Croatian Institute of Public Health of the Koprivnica-Križevci County for funding majority of data analyses.
Funding
The majority of data provided in this paper were financed by the Croatian Institute of Public Health of the Koprivnica-Križevci County within the framework of the project “Monitoring of ecosystem in environment of Central gas station Molve,” which included sample collection and analysis. The funding source was not involved in the interpretation of data, writing the paper nor the decision to submit the article for publication.
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ML: conceptualization, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing, visualization; TO: methodology, validation, formal analysis; AS: methodology, validation, formal analysis; BS: investigation, formal analysis, visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing; BP: investigation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, supervision, validation; ŽZ: resources, investigation, methodology, project administration, writing—review & editing; IK: resourses, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology; APC: investigation; JJ: resourses, funding acquisition; ES: investigation, resources. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Lazarus, M., Orct, T., Sekovanić, A. et al. Spatio-temporal monitoring of mercury and other stable metal(loid)s and radionuclides in a Croatian terrestrial ecosystem around a natural gas treatment plant. Environ Monit Assess 194, 481 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10140-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10140-6