Industrial development of coastal cities and ports renders significant influence on the geological and environmental conditions in the offshore zones and results in formation of complex manmade sediments, which are usually characterized by anomalously high contents of toxic and heavy metals, petroleum products and other compounds having adverse impact on vegetation, animals and humans. The paper presents a comparative characteristic of heavy metal content (copper, zinc, nickel, lead, etc.) in bottom sediments in the northern part of the Gulf of Finland in order to assess the degrees of pollutant concentration and occurrence forms as well as conditions of their migration.
Surface and underground spills of oil and petroleum products often occur at many facilities, such as industrial enterprises, thermal power plants, boiler houses, transport parks, gas stations, warehouses of fuel and lubricants, etc. Environmental disturbance of soils and soil causes the necessity of spill control and reclamation of the contaminated territories. The most economically and ecologically advantageous is bioremediation at the pollution site. In this case the contaminated space is aerated through a system of filtering channels, stimulating the vital activity of autochthonous hydrocarbon-oxidizing microorganisms. In order to establish the pattern of changes in physical and chemical properties of soils and system parameters in the bacterial method of remediation, to determine the criterial dependencies and refine the design of the bioreactor the analysis of field work, samples of contaminated soil and soils was conducted, a mathematical and justified physical model of the oil pollution locus was created.
