Contaminants heritage

An important industrial industry was working at the Almozara neighborhood during the last century. Part of the activity generated wastes that present high metal content and they remain below of the surface of part of the neighborhood. These metals can interact with people when these materials are in the surface, and can interact with human health.

Chemical wastes persist in an urban area from Zaragoza. Magnetic changes measured directly over the soils can permit to easily and fastly locate them.

As detailed analysis are expensive and time consuming, a selection of the samples to be analyzed can improve and speed up their characterization. Magnetic properties of wastes are different than the natural soils from the study area, producing that a measurement of such properties can be indicative of soil contamination (degree of wastes mixture).

The carried out analysis of magnetic properties (magnetic susceptibility) have showed very high values for wastes and wastes mixtures with naturals soils and wastes, and very low values for the natural samples Besides the mixture with wastes, other source for magnetic changes is the generation of concentrations of natural iron materials in the interaction between soil and vegetation.

Some of the identified changes can permit to separate between wastes and natural soils, and to define groups of samples were to perform later detailed analysis. The magnetic analysis carried out directly in the field can permit the mapping of distribution of the magnetic properties and potential wastes content.

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