Determination of platinum group metals in great urban agglomerations


                                 Stanislav Ježek, Renata Komendová

                                       xcjezek@fch.vutbr.cz

   Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry and Environmental
                            Protection, Purkyňova 464/118, Brno 612 00



During the past 60 years the number of cars in the world has increased from 40 million to present
1120 million cars. The vast majority of car catalytic converters contain platinum and palladium.
Due to amortization of catalytic converters, concentration of platinum gradually increases near
roads. It is lead to increase bioavailability and in the biosphere elements reception arises. For
humans and animals, the major concern is airborne dust containing platinum and palladium, because
it can settle in their respiratory tracts. In addition, due to climatic influence it can be
transported over greater distances, which can cause problems also in large distances from the
exposition site. Nevertheless, the highest concentrations of platinum metals are near to the roads,
where they accumulate and potentially contaminate the urban sewage network or surface waters.
Subsequently, compounds of these metals accumulate in the sediments, where can be transformed to
more toxic forms.

In this work we present a monitoring study including two different cities. First Brno (Czech
Republic), where live around 380 000 inhabitants and Moscow (Russian Federation) with more than 12
millions inhabitants. Locations for monitoring has been chosen to characterize  the  places with
the highest density of traffic jam. Essentially, these are busy junctions,  busy road sections,
road bypasses and highways. The results imply that in Brno, the concentration of platinum metals is
generally lower than in Moscow. The highest concentration in Brno was found approximately
80ng/g[soil] for platinum and less 25ng/g[soil] for palladium.

In Moscow, the concentration of metals is 10 times more than in Brno, which can be attributed
statistically higher number of diesel cars, higher density of traffic jam and smaller influence of
wind transporting the particles from the exposition sites.


Acknowledgement: This work was supported by project No. FCH-S-16-3364 from the Ministry of
Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic