Concentrations of manganese and iron in some woody and herbs plants

Heavy metals are the substances that indicate environmental pollution. The plants polluted with heavy metals may endanger natural environment and cause health problems in humans. In our multidisciplinary research of the concentrations of pollutants in forest ecosystems and natural environment in Belgrade, we examined the contents of heavy metals essential for plants but harmful in greater concentrations on a long-term basis. The fact that heavy metals manganese and iron are accumulated in plants to the greatest extent focused our work on determination of the level of concentrations of Mn and Fe in the vegetative parts of 8 plant types on three locations on the Avala Mountain and one location in the centre of the city of Belgrade. The analyses of heavy metals contents in plants were performed by the method of flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The examination of the existence of important differences between the average values was performed by implementation of Duncan’s test for the level of significance of 95%. The current contents of heavy metals in plants in the area of the protected natural resource Avala do not represent danger that would presently cause notable damage to forests but show the tendency of the increase of concentrations. Therefore, this issue should be constantly monitored.