Biogeochemical cycle of Hg and heavy metals in the highly contaminated Augusta Bay (Sicily, southern Italy)

Introduction Augusta Bay is one of the three highly contaminated areas on the Italian cost selected as natural laboratory within the CISAS project. Comprehensive investigation of biogeochemical dynamics of traditional and emerging contaminants hasbeen carried out in all the environmental matrices (air, seawater, soils, sediments and food) to verify sources, pathways and fate in the studied system and transfer mechanisms to the ecosystem and humans. This work a short presentation of the scientific approach followed to investigate on heavy metals (with a particular focus on Hg) in the marine environment of Augusta Bay offers the methodological view adpted in the other study areas of CISAS and, specifically, an ensemble of new results about the biogeochemical cycles of contaminants in coastal marine system in order to identify possible transfer mechanisms from environment to human.