Assessment of snow cover pollution of the mining area

The purpose of the work is to assess snow cover pollution of Sibay city with sulfates and heavy metals. The paper presents snow cover study conducted in January-February 2019 in accordance with the requirements of generally accepted regulatory and procedural documents [11-12]. The site near the pond in the northern part of the city was as a conditional background. The paper describes the analysis of samples for the content of heavy metals carried out by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, the sulfate concentration measured by the photometric method. The study used pH-meter to determine the pH. To calculate the total pollution indicator the study used obtained results. Snow sulfate pollution was at the admissible level. The highest content of sulfates was in the area of industrial enterprises (the excess of background indicators was in the range of 5.1-11.1 times). The study revealed polyelement pollution of snow with such metals as (Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn) in the zone of quarry emissions. Snow cover next to the pit dumps has a moderately dangerous pollution category. Copper and zinc make the main contribution to pollution. Thus, the activity of mining enterprises contributes to the accumulation of elevated concentrations of metals in the atmospheric surface layers, which negatively affects the ecological and hygienic situation in the region.