## 3 Results and Discussions
### XRF Soil Analysis
Table 5 also presents the values of the normal legal value (NV), sensible alert threshold (SAT) and sensitive intervention threshold (SIT), according to the Romanian normative \"Regulations regarding environmental pollution assessment\" [52]. For parks and playgrounds, the soil is considered to be for sensitive use, for the reason that children directly exposed to pollutants from soil can develop specific diseases or allergies. In order to investigate if the soils from the parks from Galati are enriched with heavy metals, and for comparison purposes, the values of Europe and world soil elemental composition are also presented in Tables 5 and 6[33,34,53,54], as well as the values from the Galati region [33,34]. The pH of the soil ranged from 6.49 to 7.61 units, with an average of 7.16 for the playground samples and 7.27 for the edge of the park samples. The value of pH is important for the reason that the heavy metal mobility and retention are strongly dependent on lower values. Compared to [31], where the pH values ranged from 8.37 to 8.84, the pH values from this study are lower, and the amount of Fe presented a deficit. The lower value for Fe was also observed in other studies regarding urban soils from playgrounds [56]. The electrical conductivity of the park soil samples varied between 181 and 1349 \(\mu\)S cm\({}^{-1}\), with an average of 681.43 \(\mu\)S cm\({}^{-1}\) for the playground samples and 568.25 \(\mu\)S cm\({}^{-1}\) for the edge of the park. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Site**} & \multicolumn{8}{c}{**Element Concentration (g kg\({}^{-1}\))**} \\ \cline{2-9}  & **Mg** & **Na** & **P** & **Al** & **Ti** & **Fe** & **Ca** & **K** \\ \hline  
S & 1.53 & 12.90 & 0.73 & 76.81 & 3.57 & 21.65 & 25.11 & 18.47 \\ Mean & 5.72 & 11.68 & 1.02 & 69.92 & 3.58 & 22.32 & 32.33 & 17.78 \\ Minimum & 0.77 & 10.00 & 0.033 & 55.21 & 3.30 & 18.69 & 11.78 & 9.13 \\ Maximum & 10.10 & 12.90 & 3.01 & 82.64 & 3.93 & 25.07 & 59.09 & 20.39 \\ SD & 2.35 & 0.74 & 0.772 & 6.89 & 0.16 & 17.08 & 13.32 & 2.34 \\ CV & 0.41 & 0.06 & 0.76 & 0.10 & 0.05 & 0.08 & 0.41 & 0.13 \\ EUROPE soil (mean) \({}^{1}\) & 11.8 & 11.5 & 1.5 & 105 & 6.09 & 38 & 35.4 & 20.2 \\ Agricultural area \({}^{2}\) & - & 6.85 & - & 44.10 & 4.56 & 39.42 & - & - \\ Industrial area \({}^{3}\) & 2.7 & 6.88 & - & 44.68 & 3.84 & 31.89 & 29.26 & 16.8 \\ Urban study \({}^{4}\) & - & - & - & - & 4.14 & 19.24 & 27.37 & 17.95 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} PS—playground sample; ES—edge of park sample; SD—standard deviation; CV—coefficient of variation; \({}^{1}\)[53]; \({}^{2}\)[33]; \({}^{3}\)[34]; \({}^{4}\)[55].  
\end{table} 
Table 6: Major element concentrations (g kg\({}^{-1}\)) found in 10 parks from Galati city, Romania (PS—playground sample; ES—edge of park sample). Tin (Sn) is a trace element essential for animal nutrition but has no known benefit in plant development. Under neutral pH conditions, it is immobile in soil. It is the 49 th most abundant element in the earth's crust, with a reported concentration of 2.5 mg kg\({}^{-1}\)[54]. In our study, it was only registered at the 9 ES location, with a concentration of 7.2 mg kg\({}^{-1}\), which is below the NV of a 7.2 mg kg\({}^{-1}\) for Romanian soil [52] and the Sn maximum concentration (9.16 mg kg\({}^{-1}\)) reported for Galati industrial soils [34]. Scandium (Sc) was only detected in three locations, at concentrations of 10.60 mg kg\({}^{-1}\) in sample 2 PS, 6.10 mg kg\({}^{-1}\) in sample 7 ES and 9.60 mg kg\({}^{-1}\) in sample 9 PS. The resulting mean concentration of 8.77 mg kg\({}^{-1}\) aligns closely with the European average of 9.1 mg kg\({}^{-1}\) for scandium in soil, as well as with the average concentration (10.29 mg kg\({}^{-1}\)) reported by [34] for an industrial site in Galati. Antimony (Sb) is a potentially toxic element that is non-essential for plants, but at high concentrations, it can cause leaf chlorosis and necrosis.