A cadmium budget for the Lot-Garonne fluvial system (France)

Abstract

Routine measurements of river discharge and total suspended sediment concentration (TSS) are combined with regular analyses for particulate and dissolved cadmium to produce a box model that allows us to propose a cadmium mass balance for the Lot-Garonne man-influenced river system (8400 km²). Nearly half the cadmium in the Garonne river is supplied by the tributary Lot river. Cadmium input onto the Lot river comprises wet deposition from the atmosphere, molecular diffusion at the sediment-water interface, surface-water runoff and discharge from the leaching of waste at a zinc refining plant. Approximately 85% of the cadmium in the Lot river is derived from anthropogenic origin. Cadmium in the industrial discharge is 80% dissolved and 20% in the particulate phase (4.2 and 1.1 t yr⁻¹, respectively). Total inputs are estimated at 4.81 t yr⁻¹ and 1.54 t yr⁻¹ for the dissolved cadmium and for the particulate phase, respectively. Budgeting estimates an output onto the Garonne river of 0.54 t yr⁻¹ for the dissolved cadmium (about 8%) and 6.13 t yr⁻¹ for the particulate cadmium (about 92%) indicating that downstream sediment-associated cadmium fluxes are enhanced by the 4.27 t yr⁻¹ removed from solution and the 0.32 t yr⁻¹ remobilized by the erosion of sediment blanketing the Lot river bed. These figures are found to be comparable with those generated by a dilution model which suggests that 97% of dissolved cadmium is taken up by the particulate phase over 0.5 km downstream from the primary anthropogenic source.