HeavymetalContaminations of Urban soils inOstrava, Czech Republic: Assessment ofMetal Pollution and using PrincipalComponentAnalysis

This study investigates the status of heavy metals contaminations in urban soils of Ostrava in
the Czech Republic. The main aim of this study was determination of concentration of Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, Mn,
V and Hg, assessment of contamination levels of metals in urban soils and verification of potential source of
metals contamination. Soil samples were collected from soil layer of 20 cm and metals were determined by
atomic spectroscopy methods (F AAS, GF AAS, AMA 254). It was concluded that metals concentrations in
studied soils increased in the following order:Hg < Cd < Cu < Pb < V < Zn <Mn, with mean values of Hg (0.17
mg/kg), Cd (0.20 mg/kg), Pb (66.93 mg/kg), Zn (209.51 mg/kg), Cu (38.49 mg/kg), V (105.18 mg/kg) and Mn
(1349.85 mg/kg). The results obtained fromassessment ofmetals pollution bymeans of index of geoaccumulation
(Igeo), enrichment factor (EF), contamination factor (CF), pollution load index (PLI), pollution index (PI) and
integrated pollution index (IPI) confirmed that urban soils were contaminated in the range from moderately
through strongly polluted up to highly contaminated soils. Multivariate statistics approach (Principal
Component Analysis) was adopted for the data treatment for identification of contamination sources. This
study verified that soil contamination was the result of the industrial processing that occurred in the studied
area. All of these data confirmed that Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, Mn, V and Hg come from anthropogenic activities,
especially from industrial processes.