PM2.5 Elements in the Rural Area of Jing-Jin-Ji Region in China: Source Identification and Health Risk Assessment

Source-Specific Health Risk of PM2.5-Bound Metals in a Typical Industrial City, Central China, 2021–2022

“…Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF) (Epsilon 5, Panalytical B. V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands) was used to measure the 16 elements contained in aerosols on the Teflon sampling membrane filter of 47 mm diameter. The specific analytical methods and steps can be found in the literature [28]. Each filter sample was analyzed for twenty minutes to obtain an X-ray spectrum corresponding to the photon energy.…”

“…In clustering analysis, two or several similar indexes were classified as one category by successive polymerization according to index similarity and kinship degree. This method is widely used in related studies [28,46].…”

“…When ILCR > 10 −4 , there is a serious carcinogenic risk; when ILCR is between 10 −6 and 10 −4 , the risk is acceptable or tolerable. When ILCR < 10 −6 , the risk is ignorable [27,28,30]. Reference values for SF and RfC are shown in Table 2 [31,50].…”

“…So far, toxicology studies point out that excessive exposure to heavy metals in PM 2.5 may threaten human health, causing respiratory tract and lung inflammation, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, and cancer [24][25][26]. So far, many studies have been carried out at home and abroad on the pollution characteristics, source, and health risk assessment of heavy metals in particulate matter [18,19,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. However, little study has been undertaken on heavy metal pollution of the atmosphere in small and medium-sized cities, particularly in typical industrial cities [32].…”

“…The sources of heavy metal elements in particulate matter are complex, originating mainly from industrial emissions, traffic exhaust, fossil fuel combustion, waste incineration, crustal dust, etc. [19,27,28,34]. As particulate matter can be suspended in the air for a long period of time, the concentration of particulate matter is not only affected by local sources of pollution emissions but also by meteorological conditions, such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, height of the boundary layer, etc., which are important factors affecting the concentration of particulate matter [36][37][38], which in turn may affect the concentration of heavy metals in particulate matter.…”