Mobility of antimony in soil and its availability to plants

In a historical mining area residual material has been filled on land and t hese locations are used today as agricultural soils or house gardens. The a ntimony concentrations in these soils are up to 500 mg/kg. Antimony transfe r into 19 vegetable and crop species was investigated. In grain and other s torage organs up to 0.09 mg Sb/kg were found, whereas maximum antimony conc entrations in shoots and leaves were determined to be 0.34 mg Sb/kg and 2.2 mg Sb/kg, respectively. Despite the high antimony contamination of the soi ls, concentrations in the investigated plants in general corresponded to co ncentrations only reported for uncontaminated soils. NH4NO3 extraction of s ome of the soils indicated that the mobile fraction of antimony present was only 0.06-0.59%. In contrast, in leaves of spinach grown under controlled conditions in soils with a high mobile antimony content an accumulation of the element could be observed: a maximum value of 399 mg Sb/kg was detected , and a correlation between the mobile fraction in the soils and antimony i n leaves was found. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.