Use of Enrichment Factors for the Assessment of Heavy Metal Contamination in the Sediments of Koumoundourou Lake, Greece

• DOI: 10.1007/s11270-009-0041-9
• Publication Date: 2009-03-20T03:09:06Z
• Authors: Aristomenis P. Ka...; Stelios Katsanevakis; Helen Kaberi
• Keywords: Sediment core; Loss on ignition

Lake Koumoundourou is a shallow meromictic lake located ∼11 km NW of Athens. It is surrounded by various industries and oil refineries, which contaminate the lake by oil spills and leakage. Moreover, the lake receives freshwater from underwater springs, plus drainage from industrialized catchment and Athens landfill. Potential contamination of the lakes’ sediments in heavy metals and metalloids was assessed by means of enrichment factors (EFs) estimated against local preindustrial core sediment; elements were normalized to loss on ignition. EFs revealed that surface sediments were enriched in Pb (×10.2), Cu (×6.7), V (×5.1), Ni (×4.1), and other heavy metals. The use of EFs is recommended as a reliable method for heavy metal contamination assessment, provided that (1) element contents are corrected following a careful normalization procedure, (2) local preindustrial sediment is used as reference, and (3) reference sediment should be unaffected by diagenetic alterations.