We investigate chiral symmetry breaking locally around a static quark
in the framework of lattice QCD by calculating the correlation of the
Polyakov loop with the chiral order parameter. We observe a restoratio
n of chiral symmetry in the vicinity of the color source with a differ
ent mechanism in both phases of full lattice QCD. In the hadronic phas
e the chiral condensate is screened by a pion cloud, and therefore the
effect is more pronounced for lighter dynamical quarks. Above the dec
onfinement phase transition we find that the Polyakov loop is surround
ed by a cloud of scalar sigma-mesons, and the local suppression of the
chiral condensate is nearly independent of the quark mass.