Soil pollution with jet-fuel by the Russian aerospace transportation

Abstract

Aviation and space transportation effect the ecosystems since the beginning and middle of 20^th century, respectively. However soil pollution with jet fuel is virtually unexplored. In this article, we summarized the levels of soil pollution near the airfields (in Central Russia) and in the falling sites of the Soyuz launch vehicle debris (in Central and Northern Kazakhstan) with petroleum hydrocarbons via the concentration of jet fuel and/or total petroleum hydrocarbons. At the long-term used airfields in the central regions of Russia, the level of contamination is acceptable: we did not find any jet fuel (its concentration was below 0.1 g/kg – the lowest detected level) in all 47 soil samples collected at the impact zones of 7 airfields. At propellant spills with an area of no >7.1 m² from the regular falling sites of the Soyuz launch vehicle first stages, the content of jet fuel and total petroleum hydrocarbons reached 128 (n = 36; 11 falling sites) and 57 g/kg (n = 2249; 230 falling sites), respectively. Four months after the jet fuel spill at Ostafyevo airfield, there was 190 g/kg of jet fuel in the impact zone. One day after the accident, up to 1.6 g/kg of total petroleum hydrocarbons were found at the site where the Soyuz launch vehicle second stage fell. Ecosystems can get rid of jet fuel pollution in a few years. For Aridisols in Kazakhstan, 0.26 g/kg total petroleum hydrocarbons is proposed as a trigger value. Fluorimetry gives lower results for total petroleum hydrocarbons than chromatography-mass spectrometry. This is probably because of different sample preparation and extraction.