Pollution status, spatiotemporal variations, and source identification of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in street dust, the case of Hamedan metropolis, west of Iran

ABSTRACT

 In the current study, a total of 162 street dust specimens were collected from 18 sites of Hamedan Megacity in 2023 and the contents of tested potentially toxic elements (PTEs) were determined by ICP-OES. The average contents of As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn with 3.91, 0.609, 53.9, 70.1, 94.1, 82.4, and 308 mg kg-1, respectively, were found to be greater than those in the background samples reported for Iran, implying the anthropogenic sources of these elements. The greatest concentrations of the analyzed PTEs were observed in the commercial or industrial areas and their highest amount were related the samples obtained in fall, indicating the impact of human entries and seasonal variations of emission sources. The cumulative mean EF, I-geo, and PI values for the analyzed PTEs decreased in the order of Zn > Cd > Cr> Cu > Pb > Ni > As. Computed cumulative values of EF, I-geo, and PI ranged from 13.8 to 53.9, 0.382 to 2.35, and 1.95 to 7.66, respectively, indicating ‘severe to very severe’, ‘unpolluted to moderately polluted’ to ‘moderately to heavily polluted’, and ‘moderate to very high pollution’ contamination levels, respectively. The PLI with accumulative mean value of 2.77 reflected high pollution levels in the entire study area. Additionally, the cumulative mean values of RI with 146, demonstrated considerable ecological risks across the investigated area. The results of PCC, PCA and HCA showed that, traffic, fossil fuel combustion and industrial activities could be considered as the most important anthropogenic factors having a significant impact on the content of PTEs in the street dust. In conclusion, an accurate investigation of probability of the environmental risks due to the dust pollution by other PTEs and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) was recommended for future works.

KEYWORDS:

• Toxic elements
• street dust
• pollution indices
• ecological risk
• source identification

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Hamedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, for providing facilities to conduct and complete this study.

Author contributions

Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Seyedeh Sholeh Hosseini, Bahareh Lorestani, Soheil Sobhanardakani, Mehrdad Cheraghi, and Sahar Rezaian. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Seyedeh Sholeh Hosseini and Soheil Sobhanardakani and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. The corresponding author ensuring that all the listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the metadata.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03067319.2024.2311289.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.