Abstract
Soil pollution in China is one of most wide and severe in the world. Although environmental researchers are well aware of the acuteness of soil pollution in China, a precise and comprehensive mapping system of soil pollution has never been released. By compiling, integrating and processing nearly a decade of soil pollution data, we have created cornerstone maps that illustrate the distribution and concentration of cadmium, lead, zinc, arsenic, copper and chromium in surficial soil across the nation. These summarized maps and the integrated data provide precise geographic coordinates and heavy metal concentrations; they are also the first ones to provide such thorough and comprehensive details about heavy metal soil pollution in China. In this study, we focus on some of the most polluted areas to illustrate the severity of this pressing environmental problem and demonstrate that most developed and populous areas have been subjected to heavy metal pollution.
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 50309011), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (GK201601009) and the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars (08501041585). We thank Yuan Guan, Jie Hu, Yuanyuan Liu, Feifei Yang and Chao Yu heartedly for completing more than 6 months of tiring data extraction.
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Duan, Q., Lee, J., Liu, Y. et al. Distribution of Heavy Metal Pollution in Surface Soil Samples in China: A Graphical Review. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 97, 303–309 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-016-1857-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-016-1857-9