A land use-based spatial analysis method for human health risk assessment of heavy metals in soil and its application in Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, China

Abstract

A land use- and geographical information system-based framework was presented for potential human health risk analysis using soil sampling data obtained in Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, China. The results show that heavy metal content in soil significantly differs among different land use types. In total, 8.3% of the study area has a hazard index (HI) above the threshold of 1.0. High HIs are recorded mainly for industrial areas. Arsenic (>87%) and the soil ingestion pathway (about 76%) contribute most to the HI. The mean standardized error and root-mean-square standardized error data indicate that the land use-based simulation method provides more accurate estimates than the classic method, which applies only geostatistical analysis to entire study area and disregards land use information. The findings not only highlight the significance of industrial land use, arsenic and the soil ingestion exposure pathway, but also indicate that evaluating different land use-types can spatially identify areas of greater concern for human health and better identify health risks.