Fingerprinting of land use-related chemical patterns in street sediments from Kolkata, India

This article presents a fingerprinting study of the street sediments in the city of Kolkata, India. Street sediment samples were taken along a transverse running from north to south through Kolkata. Their chemical compositions reflect diverse land uses of the surrounding districts such as industry and urban and residential dwelling. In addition to the impact of geogenic sources on patterns of chemical elements in the sediments, various anthropogenic sources were identified: construction materials, traffic, coal combustion, metal processing, and diffuse distributed pollution sources. In these sediments, allowable concentrations are exceeded for various heavy metals with respect to existing limiting values of soils. Although leaded petrol was officially phased out in India in 2000, street sediments still show high Pb concentrations of up to 850 mg/kg. The results also show that some elements, such as Al, Ti, and Ca, which are generally accepted to indicate geogenic sources, can also be attributed to anthropogenic sources.