Comportamento de íons metálicos em solos do entorno de área de mineração em Lavras do Sul, RS

Abstract

At the present time, while decreasing natural resources reserves, the amount and extent of environmental damages resulting from this exploitation increase. Among the various productive activities mining is one of those that also cause losses to the quality of air, water and soil, among other reasons, due to the loss of ore in tailings, whose meaning can be translated as contamination. This is the scenario that is observed today, around the small town of Lavras do Sul, 320 km west of the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where three centuries of mining vocation and the dreams of riches have produced countless Excavations, accompanied by large quantities of tailings and sterile, in piles or scattered on the surface. In this context, the "Cerro Rico Mine" (MCR) area was chosen, about six kilometers east of the city, with the objective of evaluating the behavior of metals ions such as copper, lead, zinc and metalloid arsenic, in the soils surrounding these areas exploited for so many years, for the production of gold and silver. The works initially aimed at understanding the ability to retain the ions of the chosen metals, which soil humic substances may possess. Next, the leaching process of the upper layer of total soil (0,00 to 0,15 m) was reproduced in the laboratory, by water that simulated approximately the same rainfall conditions, using the technique of percolation columns. The work was accompanied by chemical analyzes of the concentration of metals and metalloid, by FRX and ICP-OES, in order to evaluate the possible existence of contamination according to FEPAM, CONAMA and USEPA criteria. The behavior of the Cu, Pb, and Zn ions, metals chosen for the study, as well as of the As, was estimated by the recognition of speciation and species mobility, using the PHREEQC software to percolates obtained in soil leaching.