Hazardous Heavy Metals Accumulation and Health Risk Assessment of Different Vegetable Species in Contaminated Soils from a Typical Mining City, Central China.

Zhen Wang,Changlin Zhan,Haseeb Tufail Moryani,Jin Zheng,Tong Wang,Jianguo Bao,Wei Kang,Wensheng Xiao

doi:10.3390/ijerph18052617

Abstract

Heavy metal poisoning has caused serious and widespread human tragedies via the food chain. To alleviate heavy metal pollution, particular attention should be paid to low accumulating vegetables and crops. In this study, the concentrations of five hazardous heavy metals (HMs), including copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and arsenic (As) were determined from soils, vegetables, and crops near four typical mining and smelting zones. Nemerow’s synthetical pollution index (Pn), Potential ecological risk index (RI), and Geo-accumulation index (Igeo) were used to characterize the pollution degrees. The results showed that soils near mining and metal smelting zones were heavily polluted by Cu, Cd, As, and Pb. The total excessive rate followed a decreasing order of Cd (80.00%) > Cu (61.11%) > As (45.56%) > Pb (32.22%) > Cr (0.00%). Moreover, sources identification indicated that Cu, Pb, Cd, and As may originate from anthropogenic activities, while Cr may originate from parent materials. The exceeding rates of Cu, Cr, Pb, Cd, and As were 6.7%, 6.7%, 66.7%, 80.0%, and 26.7% among the vegetable and crop species, respectively. Particularly, vegetables like tomatoes, bell peppers, white radishes, and asparagus, revealed low accumulation characteristics. In addition, the hazard index (HI) for vegetables and crops of four zones was greater than 1, revealing a higher risk to the health of local children near the mine and smelter. However, the solanaceous fruit has a low-risk index (HI), indicating that it is a potentially safe vegetable type.

Highlights

Except Cr, all the soil heavy metals (HMs) contents were higher than the background values of soil in Hubei Province
63.0), posing moderate potential ecological risk though this study, we found that values were thanazero to some degree in the being lower risk level than non-ferrous metals smelter
Our results indicated that the polluted by Cu, Cd, Pb, and As, and as expected, the vegetables and crops were contents of Cu and Cd in all sites near the Tonglushan mine and copper smelter were contaminated by these toxic metals to a greater extent, which threatened the health of lower than those in previous studies [40]

Summary

Introduction

Heavy metal (HM) contamination, including copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and arsenic (As), is primarily attributed to anthropogenic activities, such as mining and metal smelting, traffic and factory emissions, ore exploitation dust fall, and sewage irrigation [1,2,3,4,5]. C Soil environment quality: Risk control standard for soil contamination of agricultural land (GB15618-2018 Ministry of Environment Protection). Nemerow’s Synthetical Pollution Index (Pn) and Potential Ecological Risk (RI). In order to obtain an accurate contaminated status of different zones, the values of zone, only the single ecological risk index of Cd was more than 40 (E = 55.2), suggesting the single-factor index and Nemerow’s synthetical pollution index were calculated (Table a moderate potential ecological risk soil (Figure S1c), while

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Methods

Results

Conclusion