Overview
This dataset paper reports trace metal concentrations in agricultural soil collected in the vicinity of a decommissioned gold mine dump in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng, South Africa. Gold is the mine type providing the contamination context; the paper does not measure gold concentrations in soil. The analytes measured are conventional potentially toxic elements (PTEs): arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, cobalt, manganese, and iron. This is a soil environment characterization dataset, not a food occurrence study.
Key numbers
Soil metal concentrations (mg/kg dry weight) reported in Table 5 include maximum values: arsenic (As) up to 118.4, chromium (Cr) up to 183.3, Cu up to 266.7, lead (Pb) up to 1,019.0, nickel (Ni) up to 71.3, Zn up to 1,802.0, Co up to 25.4, Mn up to 2,170.0, Fe up to 112,220.0. The paper also characterizes the geotechnical properties of the tailings dump (Tables 8-10) and presents a study area map (Figure 1). Spatial location details are given in Table 1.
Methods summary
ICP-OES analysis of soil samples from agricultural farmland proximal to the gold mine tailing dump. Sieve analysis and geochemical characterization performed in parallel. The paper is classified as a data publication (Data in Brief journal) rather than an interpretive study.
Implications for the wiki
This paper provides soil-level PTE evidence relevant to Arsenic, Lead, Chromium, Zinc, and Cobalt in the context of gold mining environmental impacts. It does not contribute food occurrence data for any metal. It does not contribute any gold concentration data. It supports the narrative that gold mining operations create localized PTE contamination zones in surrounding agricultural land.
Related evidence
Update history
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