Published in AgroLife Scientific Journal, Volume 8, Number 2
Written by Edward MUNTEAN, Nicoleta MUNTEAN, Marcel DUDA
Controlling the contamination of crop plants with pollutants has raised increasing interest in recent years; among the investigated pollutants, heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are of particular interest because some are toxic and/ or carcinogenic. The main purpose of this paper is to establish the contamination of autumn wheat grains (Arieşan variety) with the xenobiotics lead, cadmium, copper, zinc and 15 priority PAHs in the conditions of experimental cultures carried out during three years in three locations with different pollution patterns: a reference field, a contaminated surface from diffuse sources and a site with historical contamination. PAHs’ determinations were performed by high performance liquid chromatography on an Agilent 1100 system with both photodiode array and fluorescence detection, while the content of heavy metals was determined by atomic absorption spectrometry using a Shimadzu AA6300 spectrophotometer. The obtained results revealed a higher share of low molecular weight PAHs, mainly naphthalene, fluorene and acenaphthene, while the contamination of analyzed wheat samples with high molecular weight PAHs was caused by benzo(a,h)anthracene, benzo(b)fluoranthene and dibenzo(a,h)anthracene. The content of both PAHs and heavy metals was highest in the samples from Cluj-Napoca, with average contents of 8.67 μg total PAHs/kg, 0.03 μg Pb/kg, 2.26 mg Cu/kg and 43.31 mg Zn/kg, in this urban location the contamination being mainly caused by the atmospheric depositions loaded with combustion products. Overall, the obtained results highlighted relatively low concentrations of the studied xenobiotics in autumn wheat grains; these data may be useful in future studies dealing with human exposure on these pollutants.
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