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Comprehensive investigation of multi-trace metals/metalloids in urban soil and street dust within Xi’an ancient city wall (NW, China)

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Abstract

Multi-trace metals/metalloids pollutions prevail in different compartments of the urban environment. Understanding the status of multi-trace metals/metalloids in urban soil and street dust are critical for contaminant control and risks assessment as well as the security development of urban system. In this study, a total of 67 urban soils and 116 street dusts were collected within Xi’an ancient city wall (NW, China) with the purpose of investigating the status of trace metals/metalloids (TMs) like As, Ba, Ce, Co, Cr, Cu, Ga, La, Mn, Nb, Ni, Pb, Rb, Sr, Ti, V, Y, Zn, Zr in comprehensive contaminations and health risks for 0–6 aged children based on the potential ecological risk assessment model and health risk assessment indices. The results illustrated that the strong variation metals of Pb, Co, Cu and Zn associated with anthropogenic sources in terms of traffic and coal combustions discriminated by PMF model, which showed their high contamination levels and potential ecological risks compared to other TMs in related with nature sources. The multi-TMs in urban soils and street dusts posed the significant non-carcinogenic risks of total for children (HItotal > 1), however, the total carcinogenic risks of Cr, Co, As, Ni and Pb were in ignored range. It was noted that the ancient city wall with 12 m height like urn environment would trap the multi-TMs emissions from the sources of traffic, coal combustion, natural and soil resuspension, and would enhance the exposure risks from TMs emissions to children consequently, especially for toxic Cr.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41877517, 41471420), the project of International Science and Technology Innovation and Cooperation Base (2018GHJD-16), Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi, China (2021KWZ-29) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK202102007 and 2020CBLZ008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, School of Geography and Tourism, Shaanxi Normal University, No.199 Chang’an South Street, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710062, PR China

    Yu Zhang, Jie Dong, Xiaoping Li, Bin Liu, Jiwen Wang, Yuhan Cao & Tao Li

  2. International Joint Research Centre of Shaanxi Province for Pollutant Exposure and Eco-Environmental Health, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710062, PR China

    Yu Zhang, Jie Dong, Xiaoping Li, Bin Liu, Jiwen Wang, Yuhan Cao & Tao Li

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  1. Yu Zhang
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  5. Jiwen Wang
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Contributions

Prof. Dr. XL: conceived and designed the experiments, organized and revised the manuscript. YZ: wrote the draft. JW: performed the determination experiments. JD: for software for plots and Bin Liu for soil and dust collection. YC and TL: assisted data processing. YZ and JD: are both for the first author. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiaoping Li.

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Zhang, Y., Dong, J., Li, X. et al. Comprehensive investigation of multi-trace metals/metalloids in urban soil and street dust within Xi’an ancient city wall (NW, China). Environ Earth Sci 80, 587 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-021-09812-2

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