Spatio-temporal change of heavy metal pollution in Sivas City

The anthropogenic heavy metal pollution of Sivas city was traced at seven stations which had the characteristic properties of the city, spatially and temporally, during the summer seasons, between 1992-1994. The heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Cr, Ni, Cu, Fe and Al) accumulated on the sprouts of Pinaceae Pinus Sylvertris L. and Fabaceae Rabinia Pseudoacacia L. were dissolved by ultrasonic leaching and were measured by flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS). The method of sample preparation was called the Bio Collector-Ultrasonic Leaching Method (BC-ULM). It was observed that the heavy metal pollution in the city increased from 1992 to 1994. The stations affected by cement factory and small industry emissions exhibited heavy metal pollution higher than the others. An agreement was observed between Pb pollution and traffic density and there also was a parallelism between Cd pollution and the industrial emissions while Fe and Al pollution reflected the effect of cement factory emissions Our aim was to explain the relation between the heavy metal pollution and meteorological conditions. The precision of BC-ULM varied between 2.8 and 11.4% (n=13) as relative standard deviation % (RSD%) depended on the analyte and nature of the sample.