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Estudo do potencial contaminante do Cemitério Jardim, Botucatu - SP

Authors
  • Rocha, Luis Augusto Gomes
Publication Date
Jul 25, 2016
Source
Repositório Institucional UNESP
Keywords
Language
Portuguese
License
Unknown
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Abstract

Urban expansion engenders the need for environmental mitigation, in which planning the processes of land use and cover generates the need of studies to enable such actions. In that expansion process, it is imperative that more attention is paid to cemeteries, since studies in the area have already evidenced soil contamination. There is currently a consensus that burial activity is responsible for soil and aquifer contamination through cemetery leachate percolation. The purpose of the present study was to examine the concentration of four heavy metals (copper, chromium, zinc, and lead) in three different types of area found in the cemetery: the burial grounds, an area with no cemeterial activity, and a forest fragment. To achieve that objective, soil samples were collected through boreholes in nine areas and six depths. The metal concentrations were determined through atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) at the Toxicology Assistance Center (Centro de Assistência Toxicológica, or CEATOX) in the IB/UNESP campus. The values obtained were then compared to the reference values used by the National Environment Council (CONAMA) nº420/2009. The final results showed that none of the samples had concentrations higher than the established values; however, it was possible to identify a higher concentration of the metals in the burial grounds and to determine its connection to the surface and subsurface water flow. As the study environment has a forest fragment downstream, it was posible to correlate the copper and zinc interactions in comparison to the burial grounds.

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