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Environmental impact assessment of salt harvesting from the salt lakes

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Abstract

Urmia Saline Lake, USL which is registered as an international park by the United Nations, has suffered hypersalinity and serious dryness in recent years. Increasing the dryness trend has been led to a great tendency, especially by private sectors to harvest salt from different parts of the bed sediments. During this study the four- step process was used for environmental impact assessment of such a large scale salt harvesting activities with specialized Folchi matrix and enriched by data on heavy metal concentrations in the limited number of sediment samples. Impact analysis using matrix showed that the most significant impacts were on environmental components, namely “land use”, “gradient and topography of the lake bed” and “hydrology and lake water quality” with score values of 73.22, 73.21 and 72.45, respectively. The mean concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Hg, Pb, Ni and Zn in salt and sediment samples were 15.2±8.8, 0.05±0.047, 15±8.2, 0.54±0.3, 11.9±6.28, 15.4±9.56 and 22.3±13.66 mg/kg, respectively. The higher concentration of arsenic and lead in comparison with earth crust averages, warns that dispersion of salt particles from storage piles may affect local people’s health. This study provides readers and authorities with environmental impacts of salt harvesting from unique saline Lake of Iran, presents effective management options such as stopping any unlicensed and unrestrained salt harvesting activities on the USL bed, avoiding deep excavations, minimizing accumulation of piles to prevent the diffusion of salt particles etc. and also specialized the Folchi matrix for application in similar projects.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financial support under grant No 59616 by the Research Vice-Chancellor of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in the form of master’s theses. The authors appreciate the financial support.

We also acknowledge Environmental Chemistry Laboratory of Faculty of Health, especially Mr. Mohammad Abedpour for supportive contribution to preparation of the sediment samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Faculty, Student Research Committee, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

    Jahangir Ekrami & Sepideh Nemati Mansour

  2. Health and Environment Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

    Sepideh Nemati Mansour & Mohammad Mosaferi

  3. Tabriz Health Services Management Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

    Mohammad Mosaferi

  4. Department of Chemistry, Tarbiat Modares University, P.O. Box 14115-175, Tehran, Iran

    Yadollah yamini

Authors
  1. Jahangir Ekrami
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  2. Sepideh Nemati Mansour
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  4. Yadollah yamini
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Correspondence to Mohammad Mosaferi.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animal experiments by any of the authors. The Ethic code of research is IR.TBZMED.REC.1396.1043.

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Ekrami, J., Nemati Mansour, S., Mosaferi, M. et al. Environmental impact assessment of salt harvesting from the salt lakes. J Environ Health Sci Engineer 19, 365–377 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-020-00609-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-020-00609-2

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