Atmospheric pollution by potentially toxic elements: measurement and risk assessment using lichen transplants

ABSTRACT

The lichen Usnea articulata collected from an unpolluted area was exposed for 6 months at 26 sites for the sample chosenusing a stratified random design, and the content of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) including As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Sn, V, and Zn, was assessed using ICP-MS. The health risk for both adults and children was then calculated using the PTEs concentrations. The results showed that despite the hostile urban conditions, transplanted lichens depicted clear deposition patterns of airborne PTEs, mostly associated with industrial sites, where As and other elements showed remarkably high values. The cumulative hazard index was below the risk threshold, both for adults and children. For the entire population (particularly children) residing in areas surrounding industrial sites, As and Cr appeared to be potentially carcinogenic elements.

KEYWORDS:

• Usnea articulata
• air pollution
• biomonitoring
• lichen transplant
• landuse

Acknowledgment

This article is taken from a Ph.D. thesis under project number 9812, which was financially supported by Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions statement

Ruhollah Khodadadi and Mohammad Sohrabi conceived the study. Ruhollah Khodadadi and Zeynab Baboli wrote the paper. Gholamreza Goudarzi and Mohammad Sohrabi designed the thesis. Gholamreza Goudarzi was responsible for project administration, providing equipment, methodology, sampling, and funding acquisition. Yaser Tahmasebi Birgani and Ali Akbar Babaei acquired the data. They also reshaped graphs. Maryam Dastoorpoor, Abdolkazem Neisi and Stefano Loppi supervised and validated the results. Stefano Loppi reviewed/edited the text. All authors approved the final text and edited the manuscript.

Ethical approval

Ethics approval for the present study was acquired from the Ethics Committee of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences (Code of ethics: IR.AJUMS.REC.1398.804).

Consent to participate

According to the national guidelines, studies such as this, that use anonymous data, do not require individual consent.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2023.2174256.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded and supported by Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Grant No: APRD-9812