Abstract
Heavy metal pollution in agricultural soil is a threat to people’s health and sustainable development. However, there is currently no nationwide health risk assessment in China. In this study, we performed a preliminary assessment of heavy metals in agricultural soils of the Chinese mainland, and found obvious carcinogenic risks (total lifetime carcinogenic risk (TLCR) > 1 × 10–5). A similar spatial distribution pattern was found in soil heavy metal and the mortality of esophagus and stomach cancers. Combining the potential carcinogenic risk assessed by LCR for individual heavy metal with Pearson correlation, Geographical Detector (q statistic > 0.75 for TLCR, p < 0.05), and redundancy analysis (RDA), it was found that long-term exposure and intake route of heavy metals exceeding the maximum safety threshold (Health Canada standard) may induce digestive system (esophagus, stomach, liver, and colorectum) cancers in rural populations. Through Partial Least Squares Path Model (PLS-PM), it was also revealed that the LCR of heavy metals was closely related to the soil environmental background (path coefficients = 0.82), which in turn was affected by factors such as economic development and pollution discharge. The current research results highlight the potential carcinogenic risk to the digestive system associated with low-dose and long-term exposure to heavy metals in agricultural soils, and policymakers should propose countermeasures and solutions according to the local conditions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bari, M. A., & Kindzierski, W. B. (2017). Concentrations, sources and human health risk of inhalation exposure to air toxics in Edmonton, Canada. Chemosphere, 173, 160–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2016.12.157
Beesley, L., Moreno-Jiménez, E., & Gomez-Eyles, J. L. (2010). Effects of biochar and greenwaste compost amendments on mobility, bioavailability and toxicity of inorganic and organic contaminants in a multi-element polluted soil. Environmental Pollution, 158, 2282–2287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2010.02.003
Chen, K., Liao, Q. L., Ma, Z. W., Jin, Y., Hua, M., Bi, J., & Huang, L. (2015). Association of soil arsenic and nickel exposure with cancer mortality rates, a town-scale ecological study in Suzhou, China. Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, 22, 5395–5404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3790-y
Chen, W., Zheng, R., Zhang, S., Zeng, H., Xia, C., Zuo, T., Yang, Z., Zou, X., & He, J. (2017). Cancer incidence and mortality in China, 2013. Cancer Letters, 401, 63–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.canlet.2017.04.024
Chen, W., Sun, K., Zheng, R., Zeng, H., Zhang, S., Xia, C., Yang, Z., Li, H., Zou, X., & He, J. (2018). Cancer incidence and mortality in China, 2014. Chinese Journal of Cancer Research, 30, 1–12.
Chiang, C. T., Lian Ie, B., Su, C. C., Tsai, K. Y., Lin, Y. P., & Chang, T. K. (2010). Spatiotemporal trends in oral cancer mortality and potential risks associated with heavy metal content in Taiwan soil. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 7, 3916–3928. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph7113916
CNEMC. (1990). The Soil Background Value in China. China Environmental Science Press.
De Miguel, E., Iribarren, I., Chacón, E., Ordoñez, A., & Charlesworth, S. (2007). Risk-based evaluation of the exposure of children to trace elements in playgrounds in Madrid (Spain). Chemosphere, 66, 505–513. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2006.05.065
Deng, Y., Jiang, L., Xu, L., Hao, X., Zhang, S., Xu, M., Zhu, P., Fu, S., Liang, Y., Yin, H., Liu, X., Bai, L., Jiang, H., & Liu, H. (2019). Spatial distribution and risk assessment of heavy metals in contaminated paddy fields – A case study in Xiangtan City, southern China. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 171, 281–289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2018.12.060
Durham, T. R., & Snow, E. T. (2006). Metal ions and carcinogenesis. EXS, 96, 97.
Fei, X., Lou, Z., Christakos, G., Ren, Z., Liu, Q., & Lv, X. (2018). The association between heavy metal soil pollution and stomach cancer: A case study in Hangzhou City, China. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 40, 2481–2490. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-018-0113-0
Hair, J. F., Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C. M., & Mena, J. A. (2012). An assessment of the use of partial least squares structural equation modeling in marketing research. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40, 414–433. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-011-0261-6
Huang, Y., Deng, M., Li, T., Japenga, J., Chen, Q., Yang, X., & He, Z. (2017). Anthropogenic mercury emissions from 1980 to 2012 in China. Environmental Pollution, 226, 230–239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2017.03.059
Huang, R. J., Cheng, R., Jing, M., Yang, L., Li, Y., Chen, Q., Chen, Y., Yan, J., Lin, C., Wu, Y., Zhang, R., El Haddad, I., Prevot, A. S. H., O’Dowd, C. D., & Cao, J. (2018). Source-specific health risk analysis on particulate trace elements: coal combustion and traffic emission as major contributors in wintertime Beijing. Environmental Science and Technology, 52, 10967–10974. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.8b02091
Huang, Y., Wang, L., Wang, W., Li, T., He, Z., & Yang, X. (2019). Current status of agricultural soil pollution by heavy metals in China: A meta-analysis. Science of the Total Environment, 651, 3034–3042. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.185
Järup, L. (2003). Hazards of heavy metal contamination. British Medical Bulletin, 68, 167–182. https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldg032
Jiang, H.-H., Cai, L.-M., Hu, G.-C., Wen, H.-H., Luo, J., Xu, H.-Q., & Chen, L.-G. (2021a). An integrated exploration on health risk assessment quantification of potentially hazardous elements in soils from the perspective of sources. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 208, 111489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111489
Jiang, H. H., Cai, L. M., Hu, G. C., Wen, H. H., Luo, J., Xu, H. Q., & Chen, L. G. (2021b). An integrated exploration on health risk assessment quantification of potentially hazardous elements in soils from the perspective of sources. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 208, 111489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111489
Jomova, K., Jenisova, Z., Feszterova, M., Baros, S., Liska, J., Hudecova, D., Rhodes, C. J., & Valko, M. (2011). Arsenic: Toxicity, oxidative stress and human disease. Journal of Applied Toxicology : JAT, 31, 95–107. https://doi.org/10.1002/jat.1649
Kilic, K., Yalçın, H., Güven, K., Dogan, H., Durak, A. (2014). Relationships among gastrointestinal cancer (Gi CA) and soil, water, plant, and heavy metals in the kayseri region
Kong Deli, Z., Haitao, H. X., Wenhai, R., Qunzhong, H., Siyu, X., & Xueyan, W. (2021). Influencing factors of farmland soil pH in southwest hubei based on PLSPM Model[J]. Soils, 53, 809–816.
Kusin, F. M., Awang, N. H. C., Hasan, S. N. M. S., Rahim, H. A. A., Azmin, N., Jusop, S., & Kim, K.-W. (2019). Geo-ecological evaluation of mineral, major and trace elemental composition in waste rocks, soils and sediments of a gold mining area and potential associated risks. CATENA, 183, 104229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2019.104229
Lee, C. P., Lee, Y. H., Lian, I. B., & Su, C. C. (2016). Increased Prevalence of esophageal cancer in areas with high levels of nickel in farm soils. Journal of Cancer, 7, 1724–1730. https://doi.org/10.7150/jca.15441
Li, X., Xie, Y., Wang, J., Christakos, G., Si, J., Zhao, H., Ding, Y., & Li, J. (2013). Influence of planting patterns on fluoroquinolone residues in the soil of an intensive vegetable cultivation area in northern China. Science of the Total Environment, 458–460, 63–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.04.002
Li, P., Hao, H., Bai, Y., Li, Y., Mao, X., Xu, J., Liu, M., Lv, Y., Chen, W., & Ge, D. (2022). Convolutional neural networks-based health risk modelling of some heavy metals in a soil-rice system. Science of the Total Environment, 838, 156466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156466
Lin, X., Peng, L., Xu, X., Chen, Y., Zhang, Y., & Huo, X. (2018). Connecting gastrointestinal cancer risk to cadmium and lead exposure in the Chaoshan population of Southeast China. Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, 25, 17611–17619. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1914-5
Liu, M. (1998). Atlas of physical geography of China. Sinomap Press.
Liu, M., Zhang, Q., Ge, S., Mason, R. P., Luo, Y., He, Y., Xie, H., Sa, R., Chen, L., & Wang, X. (2019). Rapid increase in the lateral transport of trace elements induced by soil erosion in major karst regions in China. Environmental Science and Technology, 53, 4206–4214. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.8b06143
Liu, B., Tian, K., He, Y., Hu, W., Huang, B., Zhang, X., Zhao, L., & Teng, Y. (2022a). Dominant roles of torrential floods and atmospheric deposition revealed by quantitative source apportionment of potentially toxic elements in agricultural soils around a historical mercury mine. Southwest China. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 242, 113854. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2022.113854
Liu, M., Graham, N., Wang, W., Zhao, R., Lu, Y., Elimelech, M., & Yu, W. (2022b). Spatial assessment of tap-water safety in China. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00898-5
Liu, Z., Du, Q., Guan, Q., Luo, H., Shan, Y., & Shao, W. (2023). A Monte Carlo simulation-based health risk assessment of heavy metals in soils of an oasis agricultural region in northwest China. Science of the Total Environment, 857, 159543. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159543
Lou, C. R., Liu, H. Y., Li, Y. F., & Li, Y. L. (2016). Socioeconomic drivers of PM2.5 in the accumulation phase of air pollution episodes in the Yangtze River Delta of China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 13(10), 928.
Luo, L., Ma, Y., Zhang, S., Wei, D., & Zhu, Y.-G. (2009). An inventory of trace element inputs to agricultural soils in China. Journal of Environmental Management, 90, 2524–2530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2009.01.011
Mao, C., Song, Y., Chen, L., Ji, J., Li, J., Yuan, X., Yang, Z., Ayoko, G. A., Frost, R. L., & Theiss, F. (2019). Human health risks of heavy metals in paddy rice based on transfer characteristics of heavy metals from soil to rice. CATENA, 175, 339–348. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2018.12.029
MEP, MLR (2014). National soil survey. National Land & Resources Information:4.
Nagajyoti, P. C., Lee, K. D., & Sreekanth, T. V. M. (2010). Heavy metals, occurrence and toxicity for plants: A review. Environmental Chemistry Letters, 8, 199–216.
Naidu, R., Biswas, B., Chen, Z.S., Jit, J., Wija Ya Wardena, M., (2021) Status of soil pollution in asia and the pacific. In FAO and UNEP, Global assessment of soil pollution. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb4894en
NBSC (2015) China statistical yearbook-2015. pp. 4–5
Ostadrahimi, A., Payahoo, L., Somi, M. H., & Khajebishak, Y. (2017). The association between urinary cadmium levels and dietary habits with risk of gastrointestinal cancer in Tabriz, Northwest of Iran. Biological Trace Element Research, 175, 72–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-016-0764-6
Scivicco, M., Squillante, J., Velotto, S., Esposito, F., Cirillo, T., & Severino, L. (2022). Dietary exposure to heavy metals through polyfloral honey from Campania region (Italy). Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, 114, 104748. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfca.2022.104748
Snow, E. T. (1992). Metal carcinogenesis: Mechanistic implications. Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 53, 31–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-7258(92)90043-Y
Su, C. C., Tsai, K. Y., Hsu, Y. Y., Lin, Y. Y., & Lian Ie, B. (2010). Chronic exposure to heavy metals and risk of oral cancer in Taiwanese males. Oral Oncology, 46, 586–590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oraloncology.2010.05.001
Sun, J., Zhao, M., Huang, J., Liu, Y., Wu, Y., Cai, B., Han, Z., Huang, H., & Fan, Z. (2022). Determination of priority control factors for the management of soil trace metal(loid)s based on source-oriented health risk assessment. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 423, 127116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.127116
Tsai, K.-Y., Su, C.-C., Chiang, C.-T., Tseng, Y.-T., & Lian, I.-B. (2017). Environmental heavy metal as a potential risk factor for the progression of oral potentially malignant disorders in central Taiwan. Cancer Epidemiology, 47, 118–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.canep.2017.02.003
Wang, J.-F., Li, X.-H., Christakos, G., Liao, Y.-L., Zhang, T., Gu, X., & Zheng, X.-Y. (2010). Geographical detectors-based health risk assessment and its application in the neural tube defects study of the heshun region, China. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 24, 107–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658810802443457
Wu, L., Qiu, X.-W., Wang, T., Tao, K., Bao, L.-J., & Zeng, E. Y. (2022). Water quality and organic pollution with health risk assessment in china: a short review. ACS ES&T Water. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.2c00137
Yang, S., Qu, Y., Ma, J., Liu, L., Wu, H., Liu, Q., Gong, Y., Chen, Y., & Wu, Y. (2020). Comparison of the concentrations, sources, and distributions of heavy metal(loid)s in agricultural soils of two provinces in the Yangtze River Delta. China. Environmental Pollution, 264, 114688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.114688
Yang, J., Sun, Y., Wang, Z., Gong, J., Gao, J., Tang, S., Ma, S., & Duan, Z. (2022). Heavy metal pollution in agricultural soils of a typical volcanic area: Risk assessment and source appointment. Chemosphere, 304, 135340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.135340
Zhan, J., Li, X., Christie, P., & Wu, L. (2021). A review of soil potentially toxic element contamination in typical karst regions in southwest China. Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health, 23, 100284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coesh.2021.100284
Zhang, S., Sun, K., Zheng, R., Zeng, H., Wang, S., Chen, R., Wei, W., & He, J. (2021). Cancer incidence and mortality in China, 2015. Journal of the National Cancer Center, 1, 2–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jncc.2020.12.001
Zheng, S., Wang, Q., Yuan, Y., & Sun, W. (2020). Human health risk assessment of heavy metals in soil and food crops in the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration of China. Food Chemistry, 316, 126213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2020.126213
Zheng, R., Zhang, S., Zeng, H., Wang, S., Sun, K., Chen, R., Li, L., Wei, W., & He, J. (2022). Cancer incidence and mortality in China, 2016. Journal of the National Cancer Center, 2, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jncc.2022.02.002
Acknowledgements
We thank Xiaolan Ding for her valuable assistance in the modeling, and the suggestions from the two anonymous reviewers. This work was funded by Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2108085MD132), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFC1808204), Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS (Grant No. SKLLQG2006), and Anhui Provincial Key Research and Development Programs (202004i07020015, 202004i07020016).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
YW Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft. ZZ Formal analysis. JH Formal analysis. YN Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Funding acquisition, Writing—review & editing. LX Formal analysis, Validation, Writing—review & editing. AX Supervision, Validation, Resources, Writing—review & editing. LW Supervision, Validation, Writing—review & editing. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interests
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Wei, Y., Zhao, Z., He, J. et al. Connection between health risk and heavy metals in agricultural soils of China: a study based on current field investigations. Environ Geochem Health 45, 7775–7789 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-023-01680-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-023-01680-y