Mobility of Potentially Toxic Elements: Environmental Hazards

Dear Colleagues,

Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) include metals and nonmetal elements such as arsenic (As) and selenium (Se). These elements can naturally accumulate in soils or sediments during weathering of rocks. In addition, they can be supplied by anthropic activities such as mining, industrial, urban, or agricultural practices. In this case, the establishment of contamination levels should involve a comparison with natural values of the area (background) and the proportion of PTEs reactive to environments, which is capable of mobilization under different conditions.

Nevertheless, this task is difficult to manage for legislators because the mobility of PTEs in soils is a complex phenomenon that depends on many factors, including soil properties and mineralogy, which would condition PTEs’ retention mechanisms (adsorption, coprecipitation, coating, etc.), metal/metalloid species, climate and humidity, presence of vegetation and humic substances, etc.

Most studies in this field evaluate PTEs’ mobilization or retention using extractants selective for certain mineral phases or via sequential extraction protocols that show the proportion of PTEs related to each fraction (soluble, exchangeable, reducible, oxidizable, residual).

This Special Issue focuses on the following topics:

• The main factors conditioning PTEs’ mobility under specified conditions and consequences;
• Detailed PTEs’ partition among minerals and associated potential mobility;
• Establishment of sources of PTEs causing pollution in soil, sediments, or waters;
• Relationship between the presence of PTEs and the incidence of ecosystem and human diseases.

Dr. Cinta Barba Brioso
Dr. Joaquin Delgado
Guest Editors

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