Assessment of house dust trace elements and human exposure in Ankara, Turkey

Abstract

One of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is leading people remain at homes longer than ever. Considering the elongation of the time people spend indoors, the potential health risks caused by contaminants including heavy metals in indoor environments have become even more critical. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the levels and sources of heavy metals in indoor dust, to assess the exposure to heavy metals via indoor dust, and to estimate the associated health risk. The highest median value was measured for Zn (263 μg g −1 ), while the lowest median concentration value was observed for Cd (0.348 μg g −1 ). The levels of elements measured in the current study were found to be within the ranges reported in the other parts of the world, mostly close to the lower end of the range. House characteristics such as proximity to the main street, presence of pets, number of occupants, and age of the building were the house characteristics influencing the observed higher concentrations of certain heavy metals in houses. Enrichment factor values range between 1.79 (Cr) and 20.4 (Zn) with an average EF value of 8.80 ± 6.80 representing that the targeted elements are enriched (EF>2) in indoor dust in Ankara. Positive matrix factorization results showed that the heavy metals in the house dust in the study area are mainly contributed from sources namely outdoor dust, carpets/furniture, solders, wall paint/coal combustion, and cigarette smoke. Carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risk values from heavy metals did not exceed the safe limits recommended by EPA. The highest carcinogenic risk level was caused by Cr. The risk through ingestion was higher than inhalation, and the risk levels were higher for children than for adults. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-022-22700-x.

Determination of Heavy Metal Concentrations in Household Dusts in Irbid and Mafraq Cities, Jordan

“…These findings reveal that there is no strong influence of different heating systems on the concentrations of Zn found in the analyzed dust samples. The average concentration of Zn obtained in this study was higher than those found in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [57], China [38], Turkey [26], and Malaysia [56], but lower than those found in Australia [54], Egypt [55], Canada [58], and Jordan, Amman city [43] as shown in Table 4.…”

“…The author reported in his study that the type of heating system (e.g., wood/olive residue, kerosene, natural gas, and central heating) has a significant impact on the concentrations of the studied metals found in the house dust samples collected from Ajlune city, Jordan [24]. Compared to other studies, the average concentration of Pb in this study was higher than those found in Malaysia [56], Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [57], Turkey [26], China [38], and Jordan, Al-Karak city [25], but lower than those found in Egypt [55], Australia [54], Canada [58], and Jordan, Amman city [43] as described in Table 4.…”

“…In addition, it is observed that there is an increase in the concentration of Cu in the dust samples collected from the houses using wood for heating compared to the houses using other different heating systems. Compared to other studies, the average concentration of Cu obtained in this study Fig 5 . Average concentrations of Cu in the analyzed dust samples collected from the studied areas during the summer and winter seasons was higher than those found in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [57], China [38], Turkey [26], Malaysia [56], and Jordan, Karak city [25], but lower than those found in Egypt [55], Australia [54], Canada [58], and Jordan, Amman city [43] as described in Table 4.…”

“…2). The elevated levels of Pb found in the analyzed dust samples could be due to the indoor sources like leaded paint, spills from batteries, cable cover, pigments, or furnishing, and due to infiltration of contaminated dust particles from the outdoor sources like combustion of leaded fuel, burning gas for heating, tires and brake abrasions, plating, gasoline additives, or engine wear [2,12,[25][26]33,[54][55]. The summer-to-winter ratio of Pb was found to be less than 1.0 in most sampling sites (Table 3).…”

“…In urbanized and industrialized areas, house dust is a heterogeneous and complex mixture of organic and inorganic particles of various origins, shapes, sizes, and toxicity [3,17,23]. House dust may originate either from natural sources like bedrocks erosion or from anthropogenic sources like infiltration of outdoor emissions from vehicles, soil, refineries, building materials, wildfires, fossil fuel burning, and industries into the indoor environment [2,3,9,13,[24][25][26]. In addition, house dust may originate from different indoor activities like smoking, incense burning, cooking, cleaning, fibers, hairs, furniture material, aerosols, and paint pigments [4,6,9,13,16,[24][25].…”