Health risk assessment of heavy metals in groundwater of coal mining area: A case study in Dingji coal mine, Huainan coalfield, China

ABSTRACT

Heavy metals enrichment in groundwater poses great ecological risks to human beings. In the present research work, a total of 59 groundwater samples from 12 sampling points in Dingji coal mine, Huainan coalfield, were collected and measured for Cu, Pb, Zn, Cd, Ni, Mn, Cr, and Fe by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The human health risk caused by heavy metals through the pathway of drinking water was evaluated and analyzed using the US Environment Protection Agency (USEPA) evaluation model. It has been found that the carcinogenic risk values were between 1.05 × 10⁻⁵ and 3.5 × 10⁻⁴, all exceeding the maximum acceptable level recommended by the USEPA, and the carcinogenic risk of Cr accounted for 99.67% of the total carcinogenic risk. The non-carcinogenic health risk values were all lower than the negligible level given by the USEPA, and the contribution of non-carcinogenic health risk was in the order of Cr > Zn > Cu / Pb >Mn > Fe > Cd > Ni. Among them, Cr had the largest contribution, accounting for 36% of the total non-carcinogenic risk value. In this study, the carcinogenic risk constituted 99.99% of the total health risk, indicating that the total health risk essentially consisted of carcinogenic risk. The research results suggest that much more attention should be paid to the health risk caused by Cr in the groundwater.

KEYWORDS:

• groundwater
• health risk assessment
• heavy metal
• ICP-MS
• coal mining

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for providing numerous constructive comments that significantly improved the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, 2014CB238903), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41373110, 41402133), and the Science Program of Department of Land and Resources of Anhui Province (2015-K-13).