Pollution and health risk assessment of heavy metals in urban soil in China

ABSTRACT

The pollution and potential health risk due to lifetime exposure to heavy metals in urban soil of China were evaluated, based on the urban soil samples collected from published papers from 2005 to 2014. The contamination levels were in the order of Cd > Hg > Cu > Zn > Pb >As > Ni > Cr, and Hg and Cd fell into the category of “moderately contaminated” to “heavily contaminated.” The non-carcinogenic risk for different populations varied greatly, among which children faced high risk, and then the adult female and adult male followed. The hazard index (non-carcinogenic risk) higher than 1.00 occurred in Shanghai, Gansu, Qinghai, Hunan, and Anhui, whereas most of those in northern and western China had low risks. For the carcinogenic risk, Anhui and Ningxia provinces had urban soils exceeding the safe reference (1 × 10⁻⁶–1 × 10⁻⁴). Qinghai and Gansu had high carcinogenic risks since their risk indexes were much closer to the reference, and the others were in low risk.

KEYWORDS:

• soil heavy metal
• pollution
• health risk
• urban environment
• China

Funding

This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41271190) and the State Scholarship Fund of China (No. 201208320130).