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Contaminated lead environments of man: reviewing the lead isotopic evidence in sediments, peat, and soils for the temporal and spatial patterns of atmospheric lead pollution in Sweden

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Abstract

Clair Patterson and colleagues demonstrated already four decades ago that the lead cycle was greatly altered on a global scale by humans. Moreover, this change occurred long before the implementation of monitoring programs designed to study lead and other trace metals. Patterson and colleagues also developed stable lead isotope analyses as a tool to differentiate between natural and pollution-derived lead. Since then, stable isotope analyses of sediment, peat, herbaria collections, soils, and forest plants have given us new insights into lead biogeochemical cycling in space and time. Three important conclusions from our studies of lead in the Swedish environment conducted over the past 15 years, which are well supported by extensive results from elsewhere in Europe and in North America, are: (1) lead deposition rates at sites removed from major point sources during the twentieth century were about 1,000 times higher than natural background deposition rates a few thousand years ago (~10 mg Pb m−2 year−1 vs. 0.01 mg Pb m−2 year−1), and even today (~1 mg Pb m−2 year−1) are still almost 100 times greater than natural rates. This increase from natural background to maximum fluxes is similar to estimated changes in body burdens of lead from ancient times to the twentieth century. (2) Stable lead isotopes (206Pb/207Pb ratios shown in this paper) are an effective tool to distinguish anthropogenic lead from the natural lead present in sediments, peat, and soils for both the majority of sites receiving diffuse inputs from long range and regional sources and for sites in close proximity to point sources. In sediments >3,500 years and in the parent soil material of the C-horizon, 206Pb/207Pb ratios are higher, 1.3 to >2.0, whereas pollution sources and surface soils and peat have lower ratios that have been in the range 1.14–1.18. (3) Using stable lead isotopes, we have estimated that in southern Sweden the cumulative anthropogenic burden of atmospherically deposited lead is ~2–5 g Pb m−2 and ~1 g Pb m−2 in the “pristine” north. Half of this cumulative total was deposited before industrialization. (4) In the vicinity of the Rönnskär smelter in northern Sweden, a major point source during the twentieth century, there is an isotopic pattern that deviates from the general trends elsewhere, reflecting the particular history of ore usage at Rönnskär, which further demonstrates the chronological record of lead loading recorded in peat and in soil mor horizons.

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Acknowledgments

Although I take sole responsibility for the contents and writing of this paper, I nonetheless benefited greatly from the direct or indirect help of Jonatan Klaminder, Johan Rydberg, and Antonio Martínez Cortizas during the writing process. Most of the original research cited in this paper also involved Ingemar Renberg, Maja-Lena Brännvall, and in the laboratory Ove Emteryd. I would also like to thank the organizers of the 2010 SEGH meeting in Galway, Ireland, for the invitation to submit a more extensive written version of a brief presentation. The revised manuscript also benefited from the helpful suggestions of two anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden

    Richard Bindler

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Bindler, R. Contaminated lead environments of man: reviewing the lead isotopic evidence in sediments, peat, and soils for the temporal and spatial patterns of atmospheric lead pollution in Sweden. Environ Geochem Health 33, 311–329 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-011-9381-7

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