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Abstract
Shanxi is a heavily polluted area in China. Our aim was to analyze the elemental concentration (71 elements) in ambient air in Taiyuan and evaluate cancer and non-cancer risks. Air was sampled in four urban sites and one rural site in the heating season (winter/spring) and summer season (totally 118 days sampling time). Mean total suspended particles (TSP) across all sampling sites were 248 µg/m3 in summer and 478 µg/m3 in winter. The heating season had higher levels of S, Pb, Br, Mn, Se, As, Ni, Cd, and Hg (23.3 µg/m3, 821 ng/m3, 725 ng/m3, 460 ng/m3, 79 ng/m3, 65 ng/m3, 34 ng/m3, 17 ng/m3, and 3.5 ng/m3, respectively) than the summer season (9.6 µg/m3, 276 ng/m3, 138 ng/m3, 283 ng/m3, 0 ng/m3, 21 ng/m3, 21 ng/m3, 6.8 ng/m3, and 0 ng/m3, respectively), except for Cr and Co, of which the levels were higher in summer. Many elements had a high correlation with the TSP level (r = 0.70–0.96) and S (r = 0.61–0.95). A health risk assessment demonstrated that Mn and Cr could have a risk of non-cancer effects. Estimated lifetime cancer risks (Ri>10−6) were observed for As, Cd, Co, Cr, and Ni, indicating that cancer risks from air pollution were relatively high in Taiyuan.
Disclosure statement
None of the authors declare any conflicts of interest.
Funding
This study was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC0207400, 2017YFC0702700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81861138005), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (2016011080), the Key Research and Development (R&D) Projects of Shanxi Province (201803D31021), the Shanxi One Hundred Excellent Experts Project (nr 9), and the Swedish Research Council Formas (348-2011-7402).