Abstract
The mercury that is released from the centralized treatment of municipal solid waste is an important source of atmospheric mercury. We chose the main urban area of Changchun as a representative area. Environmental factors such as total mercury content, temperature, wind speed, and other factors were measured in samples from the trash cans of two types of collection points (trash cans and garbage stations), the topsoil under the selected trash cans, and the ambient air above the selected trash cans. The potential ecological risks of mercury pollution were evaluated. The results showed that the mercury content levels of all sample types in the refuse transfer station were higher than the garbage cans and there were no significant differences observed between soil surface mercury and garbage cans. The mercury content levels in the atmosphere and the surface soil at the garbage collection points were found to increase along the cascade relationship of the garbage collection. However, there were no correlations observed between the atmospheric mercury content levels and the surface soil mercury content levels with the attachments and the sum of the former two. There were no correlations observed between surface soil and the attachments, or among the attachments, surface soil, and the atmospheric mercury content levels. The mercury content levels in the attachments, surface soil, and atmosphere of the garbage collection points in the study area were negatively correlated with the loop lines. Meanwhile, the potential ecological risk indexes of the garbage cans and garbage stations were found to be high. The chronic non-carcinogenic risks of mercury to children and adults were determined to be very low. The risks of mercury to children were higher when compared with adults. The highest non-carcinogenic risks of mercury pollution were determined to be within the central area of Changchun.
Highlights
Mercury is considered to be a global pollutant known to have strong toxicity, longlasting and hidden pollution characteristics, easy migration abilities, and high bioaccumulation
This study found that the mercury content levels of all types of samples at the refuse transfer stations were higher than those observed in the garbage cans, and there were no significant differences observed in the mercury content levels between the surface soil and garbage cans
The mercury content levels in the atmosphere and surface soil of the refuse collection points were found to increase along the cascade relationship of refuse collection, showing the order of landfills > refuse transfer stations > garbage cans
Summary
Mercury is considered to be a global pollutant known to have strong toxicity, longlasting and hidden pollution characteristics, easy migration abilities, and high bioaccumulation. Mercury tends to circulate throughout the world before settling back to the Earth’s surface. It may enter various ecosystems in order to complete various biogeochemical cycles [1,2,3,4]. The research conducted by Mackay pointed out that the natural sources of atmospheric mercury include volcanoes, geothermal activities, soil, natural water, and plant transpiration, and the main form of mercury release is elemental Hg. The largest anthropogenic sources of atmospheric mercury are metal smelting and coal combustion, which potentially account for 45% and 38%, respectively, of the total mercury emissions. The known anthropogenic sources of atmospheric mercury include metal smelting, coal combustion, waste incineration, chlor-alkali industrial production, and various industrial products containing mercury [5,6,7,8]
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