Abstract
The article studies the level of rare earth metal pollution in urban and suburban garden plots of the city of Pavlodar. The main attention is paid to lanthanide pollution in the system “precipitation (snow) – soil – vegetables”: accumulation of metals in snow, their migration to soil and accumulation in plants. Pavlodar, as an industrially developed city, is exposed to emissions from industrial enterprises, transport and stove heating, which makes it vulnerable to rare earth metal pollution. The results show that the concentrations of the investigated elements in the solid phase of snow decrease in the following order (mg/kg) Ce (54.1) > La (27.9) > Nd (26.9) > Gd (5.8) > Dy (5) > Eu (1.4) > Ho (0.8) > Lu (0.3). In soils, metal concentrations decreased in the following order (mg/kg) Ce (33.28) > La (15.41) > Nd (14.72) > Gd (3.74) > Lu (1.3) > Ho (1.01) > Eu (0.82) > Dy (0.39). It was found that the content of metals in snow significantly exceeds their concentrations in soil, except for holmium and lutetium, whose concentrations are higher in soil. Background concentrations in the snow cover are on average 1.3 times lower than urban concentrations. The metals La and Ce have very low accumulation values for both potato and tomato, although there is a slight excess of the bioaccumulation factor for potato. These data are important for the development of measures to reduce pollution and protect public health.