Abstract:
Nowadays, environmental pollution of heavy metals from automobiles has attained much attention. This was caused some heavy
metal pollution in road side soils. In this research, the some selected heavy metals were studied along the taken road side soils
under heavy traffic in northwestern Turkey. The aim of this research was carried out to determine the heavy metal pollution status
of some agricultural lands along the one of major highways of Turkey. For this purpose, roadside surface soil samples were
collected from 50 sites along the Bursa-Izmir highway and analyzed for cadmium, copper, lead, and zinc. Their concentrations
and distributions were determined in this research. Lead concentration was the highest in the soils and ranged from 30.0 to 1210.0
mg/kg. Zinc concentration varied from 62.1 to 492.8 mg/kg and copper concentration ranged from 20.0 to 250.6 mg/kg. Cadmium
concentration was the lowest in the soil and varied from 0.5 to 5.2 mg/kg. Overall, the levels of heavy metals in roadside soils
were higher as compared to their natural background levels.