MODERN SPECTRAL AND BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN MONITORING OF URBAN SOILS

Abstract

It is well known that urban soils often contain pollutants of inorganic and organic nature. In order to assess the urban soil toxicity the spectral and biotesting methods have been used. The research objects were water extracts of urban soils and background soil. The optical density of the spectra of absorption and fluorescence of soil extracts was generally characteristic of humic substances. However, upon excitation with light at a wavelength of 270 nm, additional peaks in the 330-400 nm were detected in the fluorescence spectrum of samples of urban soils, due to organic pollutants of anthropogenic origin. Also the quantum yield of fluorescence for urban soils showed an excess of 1.5-3 times according to the difference spectrum of fluorescence. This indicated the presence of petroleum products, surfactants and other organic pollutants in Almaty city’s soils. The acute toxicity of the studied soil samples was not detected in using 2 biotests, but the permissible toxicity of soils was identified.