Dataset Information

Soil from an Abandoned Manganese Mining Area (Hunan, China): Significance of Health Risk from Potentially Toxic Element Pollution and Its Spatial Context.

ABSTRACT: This study assessed the significance and potential impact of potentially toxic element (PTE) (i.e., Mn, Pb, Cu, Zn, Cr, Cd, and Ni) pollution in the surface soil from an abandoned manganese mining area in Xiangtan City, Hunan Province, China, on the health of residents. The risks were sequentially evaluated using a series of protocols including: the geo-accumulation index (Igeo), pollution load index (PLI), potential ecological risk index (RI), and implications for human health from external exposures using the hazard quotient (HQ), hazard index (HI) and carcinogenic risk (CR). The results revealed that Mn and Cd were the major pollutants in the soil samples. The ecological risk assessment identified moderate risks, which were mainly derived from Cd (82.91%). The results of the health risk assessment revealed that generally across the area, the non-carcinogenic risk was insignificant, and the carcinogenic risk was at an acceptable level. However, due to local spatial fluctuation, some of the sites presented a non-carcinogenic risk to children. The soil ingestion pathway is the main route of exposure through both non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risks, with Mn being the major contributor to non-carcinogenic risk, with Cr and Cd the major contributors to carcinogenic risk. In addition, three pollution sources were identified through the Pearson correlation coefficient and principal component analysis (PCA), which included: a. mining activities and emissions from related transportation; b. natural background; c. agricultural management practices and municipal sewage discharge. The study provides information on the effects of spatial variation for the development of the abandoned mining areas and a useful approach to the prioritization of locations for the development and utilization of soil in these areas in China.

SUBMITTER: Luo X

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7558159 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Soil from an Abandoned Manganese Mining Area (Hunan, China): Significance of Health Risk from Potentially Toxic Element Pollution and Its Spatial Context.

Luo Xin X Ren Bozhi B Hursthouse Andrew S AS Thacker Jonathan R M JRM Wang Zhenghua Z

International journal of environmental research and public health 20200909 18

This study assessed the significance and potential impact of potentially toxic element (PTE) (i.e., Mn, Pb, Cu, Zn, Cr, Cd, and Ni) pollution in the surface soil from an abandoned manganese mining area in Xiangtan City, Hunan Province, China, on the health of residents. The risks were sequentially evaluated using a series of protocols including: the geo-accumulation index (I<sub>geo</sub>), pollution load index (PLI), potential ecological risk index (RI), and implications for human health from e ...[more]

PMID: 32916867

Similar Datasets

Project description:Agricultural lands, especially those where wheat is cultivated, in the vicinity of intense anthropogenic activities may be laden with potentially toxic elements (PTEs), resulting in increased risk for human health. In this study we monitored three regions located in central Greece, currently cultivated with wheat: Domokos and Eretria, two areas with abandoned chromium mines, but never studied before, and the industrial area of Volos, near a major steel factory. All soils were alkaline with medium CaCO3 content. As expected, Cr was extremely high in the first two areas (705.2 in Eretria and 777.5 mg kg-1 in Domokos); Ni was also found elevated (1227 in Eretria, 1315 in Domokos and 257.6 mg kg-1 in the steel factory), while other harmful metals (Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn) were rather low. As a result, pollution load index, a cumulative index showing the contamination level of an area, was higher than 1.0 in all three areas (Eretria = 2.20, Domokos = 2.28, and steel factory = 1.61), indicating high contamination and anthropogenic inputs. As for the wheat parts (shoots and grains), they were found to have no elevated concentrations of any of the measured metals in all three study areas, probably due to the alkaline soil pH that decelerates metal mobility. This was also confirmed by the very low soil-to-plant transfer coefficient values for all metals. In assessing the possible risk concerning human health, we found that the soil-to-human pathway would induce no significant risk (exhibited by hazard index of less than 1.0), while the risk from grain-to-human resulted in considerable risk for human health in the steel factory of Volos (where HI > 1.0). Our findings suggest that rural areas never studied before with a history in some offensive anthropogenic activity can prove to be a contamination hotspot; we regard this study as a pivotal for similarly never-visited-before areas casually cultivated with wheat (or other important crops for human nutrition). We further recognize the need for a more in-depth study that would acknowledge the geochemical speciation of the studied metals and also monitor other important crops and their possible uptake of PTEs.

Dataset Information

Soil from an Abandoned Manganese Mining Area (Hunan, China): Significance of Health Risk from Potentially Toxic Element Pollution and Its Spatial Context.

Publications

Soil from an Abandoned Manganese Mining Area (Hunan, China): Significance of Health Risk from Potentially Toxic Element Pollution and Its Spatial Context.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets