Shawket F. Sirawan’s scientific contributions

During the last few years, the numbers of vehicles in a developing Erbil City in Kurdistan region - Iraq have increased rapidly which leads to increasingly high contamination of some heavy metals in the street dust around traffics. This research represents the level of heavy metals (Pb , Cd , Ag , Cr , Cu, Zn and Fe ) in the traffic street dust . The results indicate a highly contaminated toxic with heavy metals when compared with the background values. The higher concentrations of Pb, Cu, Cr and Fe were observed as being related to high vehicular and heavy traffic, nevertheless other elements such as Cd, Zn and Ag do not show anthropogenic activity influence and their content can be attributed to the composition of soil. The PI value of the metal included, Fe, Pb, Cu , Cr, Zn, and Cd ranged from 28.54 - 36, 4.73 - 25.13, 3.23 - 9.75 and 3.35 - 5.65, 3.78-15.06, 7.89-9.87 respectively. The results indicate that all traffics are heavily contaminated with obvious heavy metals like Fe, Pb, Cu and Cr (PI > 3). The PI value of Ag varied from 1.06 to 1.74 with a average value of 1.462 and about 100% of soil samples were classified as being moderately contamination with Ag metal.