Atlas of Contaminated Sites

Trial site, Italy

Sito metallurgico dismesso dell'Italia nord-occidentale (arsenico)

A metallurgical works dismantled in the early 1980s, in north-western Italy; the paper does not name it. The soil holds 230–270 mg/kg of arsenic (Italian limit for industrial land: 50 mg/kg) and cadmium.

Phytoremediation

Contaminants

Metals

Metalloids

Plants and fungi at this site

PhytoremediationField scale, 2014–2017

Pteris vittata, Rhizophagus spp., Funneliformis spp.

The University of Eastern Piedmont (Cantamessa, Massa, Gamalero, Berta) grew the fern Pteris vittata, inoculated or not with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, first for two years in a greenhouse on soil from the site and then for three years on the site itself, from March 2014, measuring arsenic at two depths.

Outcome In the greenhouse soil arsenic fell from 170 to 49 mg/kg with mycorrhizal ferns. In the field, by the third year, nearly all sub-areas were below 50 mg/kg in the 0–0.2 m layer (one stayed above the limit); fronds held 835 mg/kg of As on average. Between 0.2 and 0.4 m the decline was slower, which the authors put down to cadmium toxicity.

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Plants

Fungi

The rest are on the contaminant pages.

Sources

  1. Cantamessa et al., Phytoremediation of a highly arsenic polluted site, using Pteris vittata L. and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, Plants, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2020

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.