This report details the study of a freshwater stream carrying high doses of heavy metals into an already affected fjord. The purpose is to find out how the measured levels of heavy metals vary across the industrial area, and if these levels are posing an environmental or health threat to the surroundings. According to the water directive of the European Union, all waters should be protected in order to reach ’good status’, and deterioration should be prevented. To keep track of the status of waters, environmental quality standards (limit values known as EQS) are used by Norwegian environmental authorities to indicate pollution levels. All measured contents in this report are therefore compared with EQS or similar limit values. New water samples were taken along the stream and in the soil and sediments during the spring of 2016. The measured levels were then compared with older water samples, and showed clear variations across the industrial area for most of the substances. For some substances, high levels of pollution were found in the soil, sediment and water. Despite this, most measured heavy metals pose no threat environmentally or health-wise due to the very alkaline water in the stream, likely to leave most metals nonbioavailable. Although the stream is heavily loaded with various heavy metals, its lack of finer matter prevents metals from binding to organic ligands, allowing the stream to become more of a transportation means than a place for accumulating metals in the soil and sediments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-127995 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Waara, Stina |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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