There are many different types of soil contamination that plague landfill sites, but heavy metal toxicity is one of the most persistent types of soil pollution. These metals are found in the toxic leachate that seeps into ground water from such sites as well as the surrounding soils.
Some of the most commonly found metals include:
* zinc
* lead
* copper
* nickel
* cadmium
and more. These metals are notable for being responsible for accumulating in the tissues of higher-order animals (including humans) and causing brain and liver dysfunction, to name just a few.
This highly contaminated water that leaks out from landfills differs from metals that are truly dissolved in solution these instead are found in colloidal forms that behave quite differently from each other in terms of toxicity and mobility.
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