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Heavy metals in the gold mine soil of the upstream area of a metropolitan drinking water source

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Abstract

Pinggu District is adjacent to the county of Miyun, which contains the largest drinking water source of Beijing (Miyun Reservoir). The Wanzhuang gold field and tailing deposits are located in Pinggu, threatening Beijing’s drinking water security. In this study, soil samples were collected from the surface of the mining area and the tailings piles and analyzed for physical and chemical properties, as well as heavy metal contents and particle size fraction to study the relationship between degree of pollution degree and particle size. Most metal concentrations in the gold mine soil samples exceeded the background levels in Beijing. The spatial distribution of As, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn was the same, while that of Cr and Ni was relatively similar. Trace element concentrations increased in larger particles, decreased in the 50–74 μm size fraction, and were lowest in the <2 μm size fraction. Multivariate analysis showed that Cu, Cd, Zn, and Pb originated from anthropogenic sources, while Cr, Ni, and Sc were of natural origin. The geo-accumulation index indicated serious Pb, As, and Cd pollution, but moderate to no Ni, Cr, and Hg pollution. The Tucker 3 model revealed three factors for particle fractions, metals, and samples. There were two factors in model A and three factors for both the metals and samples (models B and C, respectively). The potential ecological risk index shows that most of the study areas have very high potential ecological risk, a small portion has high potential ecological risk, and only a few sampling points on the perimeter have moderate ecological risk, with higher risk closer to the mining area.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ms. Chen Xiaomin for her assistance with samples analysis. This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41173113), the International Cooperation Foundation (2012DFA21000) and the Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil and Environmental Engineering School, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Xueyuan Road No.30, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Huaijian Ding, Hongbing Ji, Lei Tang, Aixing Zhang, Xinyue Guo, Cai Li, Yang Gao & Mergem Briki

  2. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, 550002, People’s Republic of China

    Hongbing Ji

  3. Beijing Geological Engineering Design and Research Institute, Beijing, 101500, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Tang

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  1. Huaijian Ding
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  2. Hongbing Ji
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  5. Xinyue Guo
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Correspondence to Hongbing Ji.

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Ding, H., Ji, H., Tang, L. et al. Heavy metals in the gold mine soil of the upstream area of a metropolitan drinking water source. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 2831–2847 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5479-2

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