Environmental interaction of antimony and arsenic near busy traffic nodes

[Display omitted] •Antimony (Sb) at crossroads represents environmental risk due to growing automotive traffic.•Brake abrasion dust is the most important source of Sb pollution in exposed urban areas.•Arsenic (As) at crossroads is transported over long distances by atmospheric particles.•Automotive traffic showed high contamination risk for Sb, but low risk for As contamination. Antimony (Sb) and arsenic (As) are elements with similar chemistry, toxicity and binding properties, but different environmental risks and prevailing anthropogenic sources. A significant source of Sb contamination is associated with braking in extremely loaded traffic areas, where the produced abrasion dust contains up to 5% wt. of Sb2S3. In these same exposure areas, As still originates mostly from the combustion of fossil fuels. Heavily loaded crossroads from three different regions of the Czech Republic (Central Europe) were monitored for Sb content in road dusts, topsoils and reference soils during a two-year season (2016–2017). The same samples were also tested for As content to evaluate current contamination trends of both elements in exposed urban areas. The concentration of Sb varied from 5 to 70 µg g−1 in topsoils, and from 20 to 350 µg g−1 in road dusts with the preference for binding to the fine particle fraction ( road dust (102 µg g−1)> topsoils (101 µg g−1) >> reference soils (