BIOAVAILABILITY- THE UNDERLYING BASIS FOR RISK BASED LAND MANAGEMENT Effectiveness of chemical amendments for stabilisation of lead and antimony in risk-based land management of soils of shooting ranges Peter Sanderson & Ravi Naidu & Nanthi Bolan Received: 18 February 2013 / Accepted: 7 June 2013 # Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Australia 2013 Abstract This study aims to examine the effectiveness of amendments for risk-based land management of shooting range soils and to explore the effectiveness of amendments applied to sites with differing soil physiochemical parameters. A series of amendments with differing mechanisms for stabilisation were applied to four shooting range soils and aged for 1 year. Chem- ical stabilisation was monitored by pore water extraction, tox- icity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) and the physio- logically based extraction test (PBET) over 1 year. The perfor- mance of amendments when applied in conditions reflecting field application did not match the performance in the batch studies. Pore water-extractable metals were not greatly affected by amendment addition. TCLP-extractable Pb was reduced significantly by amendments, particularly lime and magnesium oxide. Antimony leaching was reduced by red mud but mobilised by some of the other amendments. Bioaccessible Pb measured by PBET shows that bioaccessible Pb increased with time after an initial decrease due to the presence of metallic fragments in the soil. Amendments were able to reduce bioaccessible Pb by up to 50 %. Bioaccessible Sb was not readily reduced by soil amendments. Soil amendments were not equally effective across the four soils. Keywords Chemical stabilisation . Shooting range . Pb . Sb Introduction Shooting ranges are operated around the world for recrea- tional and military purposes. Environmental concerns about shooting ranges have been well documented, particularly in countries where shooting ranges are prevalent such as the USA (USEPA 2001), Canada (Laporte-Saumure et al. 2010), Sweden (Lin et al. 1995) and Finland (Sorvari et al. 2006). The amount of Pb used in bullets annually in these countries ranges from 72,600 metric tons in the USA (USEPA 2001), 2,000 metric tons in Canada (Scheuhammer and Norris 1995), 500–600 tons of shotgun ammo in Sweden (Lin 1996) and 400 tons in Switzerland (Johnson et al. 2005) to 530 tons a year in Finland (Mukherjee 1994) and 800 tons annually in Denmark (Jorgensen and Willems 1987). Lead is the primary component of bullets, making up 93.1 % of bullet mass (Laporte-Saumure et al. 2010). Anti- mony (1.9 %) is used as a hardening agent for Pb, and copper is used in jacketed bullets (4.5 %) with Ni or Zn, alloys in the copper jackets (0.5 %) (Laporte-Saumure et al. 2010). Arsenic may be present as an impurity in Pb. These are the contami- nants of primary environmental concern. The burden of Pb in shooting range soils is often greater than 10,000 mg/kg Pb (Cao et al. 2003; Chen et al. 2002; Johnson et al. 2005), exceeding by an order of magnitude the environ- mental trigger values such as those set by the EPA in the USA and the National Environmental Protection Measure in Austra- lia. Contamination at shooting ranges is characterised by the presence of large amounts of metallic Pb, and this requires consideration. The presence of co-contaminants of Pb including Sb, Cu, Zn, Ni and As also needs to be considered. The potential for migration of Pb through the soil profile (Astrup et al. 1999; Dermatas et al. 2006a, b; Knechtenhofer et al. 2003) and into the groundwater (Sorvari et al. 2006), movement by surface runoff (Heier et al. 2009; Stromseng et al. Responsible editor: Zhihong Xu P. Sanderson : R. Naidu : N. Bolan CERAR, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia 5095, Australia P. Sanderson : R. Naidu (*) : N. Bolan CRCCARE, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, South Australia 5095, Australia e-mail: ravi.naidu@crccare.com Environ Sci Pollut Res DOI 10.1007/s11356-013-1918-0