222
Trace Elements in Abiotic and Biotic Environments
TABLE 29.1
Nickel Contents of Soils, Water, and Air
Environmental Compartment
Range Mean
Soil (mg/kg)
Light sandy
7–33
Medium loamy
11–25
Heavy loamy
20–50
Calcareous (Calcisols)
20–95
Organic
4–20
Water (μg/L)
Rain
0.3–1.0
River
0.2–27
Ocean
0.6–1.7
Baltic Sea
0.09–1.1 a
Air (ng/m 3 )
Urban/industrial areas
4–120
Remote regions
0.9
Source: Data are given for uncontaminated environments,
from various sources, mainly Kabata-Pendias, A. and
Mukherjee, A.B., Trace Elements from Soil to Human,
Springer, Berlin, Germany, 2007; Reimann, C. and de
Caritat, P., Chemical Elements in the Environment,
Springer, Berlin, Germany, 1998.
a Szefer, P., Metals, Metalloids and Radionuclides in the Baltic
Sea Ecosystem, Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2002.
especially peaty soils. Higher Ni contents are also in soils of arid and semiarid regions,
as well as in serpentine soils, which contain Ni (in Serbia) from 0.08 to 6.22 mg/kg
(Tumi et al. 2012). The highest Ni contents in such soils are in Rhodesia, up to about
7000 mg/kg (Table 29.2). High levels of Ni in uncontaminated soils, as reported from
some countries (in mg/kg), are as follows: Canada, 119; China, 450; Japan, 660; and
Italy, 3240 (Kabata-Pendias 2011). Soils of the remote region in Spitzbergen contain Ni
within the range of 0.15–0.96 mg/kg (Gulińska et al. 2003). Its geometric mean content
in soils from major agricultural areas of the United States is 16.5 mg/kg, ranging from
0.7 to 269 mg/kg (Holmgren et al. vide Kabata-Pendias 2011). The range of Ni contents
in the surface layer of agricultural soils of Poland is 1.4–71 mg/kg (Siebielec et al. 2012).
The mean Ni content in organic surface soils of Norway is 7.5 mg/kg (Nygard et al.
2012), and that in agricultural soils of Sweden is 13 mg/kg (Eriksson 2001a). Agricultural
soils usually contain more Ni than not cultivated ones.
The maximum permissible Ni level in agricultural soils, established in 1997,
was 50  mg/kg (Herselman et  al. vide Kabata-Pendias 2011). However, the
recent estimation for accepted Ni levels in soils, based on various criteria, is