Environmental Pollution Assessment of Trace Metals in Road Dust of Istanbul in Turkey

Road dust which is a contamination indicator in the environment may contain high levels of heavy metals, which can continue for a long time in the urban areas causing various problems to living organisms. Heavy metals in urban road dust can originate from many moving and steady sources such as industrial discharges, vehicle releases, atmospheric deposition, and natural geochemical processes in urban areas. In this study, assessment of contamination trace metals is investigated including antimony (Sb), barium (Ba), bismuth (Bi), gallium (Ga), lanthanum (La), scandium (Sc), strontium (Sr), and tungsten (wolfram, W) in Istanbul road dust by using enrichment factor (EF), pollution load index (PLI), contamination factor (CF), and contamination degree (Cd). In addition, statistical methods like correlation and multivariate analysis are used to identify the causative resources of these metals. According to the results of this study, PLI values are higher than 1 for all trace metals. The EF values are also found to be high for Sb, Bi, and W. The CF indicators of trace metals show moderate contamination for Ba, Sr, and Bi, and considerable contamination for W, and a very high contamination factor for Sb. The current findings indicate that anthropogenic activities are the main trace metals’ resource in Istanbul road dust samples.