The ecological risk, source identification, and pollution assessment of heavy metals in road dust: a case study in Rafsanjan, SE Iran

Abstract

Heavy metal (HM) contamination in road dust is a potential environmental and human health threat. The sources, concentrations, spatial distribution, and ecological risk of As, Cd, Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb, and Zn in road dust in Rafsanjan City, Iran, were investigated. Pollution was assessed using the enrichment factor (EF). The potentially harmful effects of HMs were evaluated by calculating the potential ecological risk factor of individual metals (E ) and of multiple metals (RI) using the Hakanson method. Correlation and principal component analyses (PCA) were applied to identify HM pollution sources. The concentrations of HMs in road dust were higher (ca. 5-10 folds) than their natural background values. The EF and E increased according to the following order Cu > Pb > As > Zn > Cd > Cr > Ni and Cu > Cd > Pb > As > Ni > Zn > Cr, respectively. Thus, Cu is regarded as the pollutant of highest concern. Based on potential ecological risk index (RI) spatial distribution, all parts of Rafsanjan are characterized by significantly high potential ecological risk. HM concentration heat maps, PCA, and correlation analysis suggest that Cu, Pb, As, Cd, and Zn may have originated from the same source and follow the same spatial distribution pattern. These metals originated mainly from anthropogenic sources like copper mining and smelting plants, industrial and chemical activities, inordinate application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in farmlands, and heavy traffic. Ni and Cr are likely to origniate from the industrial activities and traffic load in Rafsanjan City.

Heavy Metals in Native Potato and Health Risk Assessment in Highland Andean Zones of Junín, Peru

“…Higher concentrations of As, Pb, Fe and Zn were observed in the following order: Quilcas > Ricrán > Jarpa > Comas. The presence [10] [47] and to air pollution [48]. Therefore, it is very important to determine the sources, distribution and level of contamination of the high Andean soils.…”

Potentially Toxic Element Content in Arid Agricultural Soils in South Iran

“…A Principal component analysis (PCA) was also carried out using SPSS 19.0 (Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.) to explore potential sources of toxic elements in agricultural soil samples from the study area. The PCA is an efficient statistical technique used to identify probable sources of PTE [38]. Varimax rotation with Kaiser Normalization was used to simplify the data and their interpretation [10,11].…”

Spatial Characteristics of Heavy Metals in Street Dust of Coal Railway Transportation Hubs: A Case Study in Yuanping, China

“…As street dust permeates the ecological environment by many means, such as surface runoff and atmospheric precipitation [16,17,18], heavy metals contained in street dust eventually enter the food chain, which are posing a potential risk to human health [19,20,21,22]. Many recent studies on heavy metals in street dust involved assessments of contamination levels [22,23,24], spatial distribution [11,22,24], and source identification [25,26,27]. Heavy metals in street dust have many sources [28,29,30], which can be divided into two types: natural sources and those based on human activity.…”