Assessment of heavy metals in sediments from a typical catchment of the Yangtze River, China

Abstract

An intensive investigation was conducted to study the accumulation, speciation, and distribution of various heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn) in sediments from the Yangtze River catchment of Wuhan, China. The potential ecological risks posed by these heavy metals also were estimated. The median concentrations of most heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn) were higher than the background values of soils in Wuhan and were beyond the threshold effect level (TEL), implying heavy metal contamination of the sediments. Carbonate-bound Cd and exchangeable Cd, both of which had high bioavailability, were 40.2% and 30.5% of the total for Cd, respectively, demonstrating that Cd poses a high ecological risk in the sediments. The coefficients of the relationship among Pb, Hg, and Cu were greater than 0.797 using correlation analysis, indicating the highly positive correlation among these three elements. Besides, total organic carbon content played an important role in determining the behaviors of heavy metals in sediments. Principal component analysis was used to study the distribution and potential origin of heavy metals. The result suggested three principal components controlling their variability in sediments, which accounted for 36.72% (factor 1: Hg, Cu, and Pb), 28.69% (factor 2: Cr, Zn, and Ni), and 19.45% (factor 3: As and Cd) of the total variance. Overall, 75% of the studied sediment samples afforded relatively low potential ecological risk despite the fact that generally higher concentrations of heavy metals relative to TEL were detected in the sediments.

Assessment of heavy metal contamination in the sediment of the River Ghaghara, a major tributary of the River Ganga in Northern India

“…Ni concentration in sediments of the river Ghaghara is compared with other rivers of the World and is presented in Table 5. Ni concentration was 27.7 mg/kg for the river Cauvery (Raju et al 2012), 67.1 mg/kg for the river Euphrates (Salah et al 2012), 41.9 mg/kg for the river Yangtze (Wang et al 2011), and 68 mg/kg was the World average (Turekian and Wedepohl 1961). Nickel can be accumulated in aquatic biota, but its magnification in the food chain is not confirmed.…”

Heavy metal pollution in sediments of a typical mariculture zone in South China

“…where E i r is the monomial potential ecological risk factor; C i and C i o are the measured concentration of specific metal in the sediment sample and its reference value (mg/kg dw), respectively; T i r is the metal's toxicity factor, and the values for Cd, As, Ni, Cu, Pb, Cr and Zn are 30, 10, 5, 5, 5, 2 and 1, respectively (Wang et al, 2011). E RI represents the overall potential ecological risk for a region based on the sensitivity of biological communities to various heavy metals.…”

Experimental Study of Mobility and Kinetic Characterization of Trace Elements in Contaminated Sediments from a River Basin in Northern Peru

“…T i r is the biological toxicity factor of different trace elements (the factors of Cd, As, Ni, Cu, Pb, and Zn were 30, 10, 5, 5, 5, and 1, respectively) (Wang et al 2011;Zhang et al 2012); E i r is the potential ecological risk factor of single metal and RI is the potential ecological risk index of all metals and metalloids present in the sample (Ye et al 2013). …”