Method for Assessing the Integrated Risk of Soil Pollution in Industrial and Mining Gathering Areas.

Yang Guan,Meiting Ju,Qian Zhang,Chaofeng Shao,Qingbao Gu

doi:10.3390/ijerph121114589

Abstract

Industrial and mining activities are recognized as major sources of soil pollution. This study proposes an index system for evaluating the inherent risk level of polluting factories and introduces an integrated risk assessment method based on human health risk. As a case study, the health risk, polluting factories and integrated risks were analyzed in a typical industrial and mining gathering area in China, namely, Binhai New Area. The spatial distribution of the risk level was determined using a Geographic Information System. The results confirmed the following: (1) Human health risk in the study area is moderate to extreme, with heavy metals posing the greatest threat; (2) Polluting factories pose a moderate to extreme inherent risk in the study area. Such factories are concentrated in industrial and urban areas, but are irregularly distributed and also occupy agricultural land, showing a lack of proper planning and management; (3) The integrated risks of soil are moderate to high in the study area.

Highlights

Industrial and mining activities have always been leading sources of soil pollution [1,2]
Li et al [12] summarized the published data (2005–2012) on soils polluted with heavy metals originating from mining areas in China, and comprehensively assessed the heavy metal pollution derived from these mines based on soil pollution levels and human health risks
The detection rate of nine kinds of heavy metals reached 100%, and the detection rate of Hg and eight kinds of organic pollutants was less than 10%, indicating that heavy metal pollution was more serious in soil environment of the study area

Summary

Introduction

Industrial and mining activities have always been leading sources of soil pollution [1,2]. In China, mining and industrial gathering areas have been established and rapidly developed across the country. According to several studies [3,4,5] and the National Soil Pollution Survey Bulletin [6], over ten million hectares of land in China have been threatened by soil pollution. Because of irrational planning and rough development in the initial construction stage, types, range and potential risks of the pollutants in soil of industrial and mining gathering areas are intricate and should not be underestimated. In the interests of preventing and controlling soil pollution caused by industrial and mining activities, several studies have conducted ecological and health risk assessments, evaluation criteria grading, and spatial distributions of pollutants in different regions of China. The spatial distribution [2,13,14,15], risk assessment [2,13,16,17,18], and mobility [19,20] of pollutants in soils provided important information

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion