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Washing antimony and arsenic from agricultural soil with eco-friendly organic acids and the relevant bioavailability assessment

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Abstract

Antimony (Sb) and arsenic (As) contamination in agricultural soil poses human health risks through agricultural products. Soil washing with degradable low molecular weight organic acids (LMWOAs) is an eco-friendly strategy to remediate agricultural soils. In this study, three eco-friendly LMWOAs, oxalic acid (OA), tartaric acid (TA), and citric acid (CA), were used to treat Sb and As co-contaminated agricultural soil from Xikuangshan mine area. The OA, TA, and CA washed out 18.4, 16.8, and 26.6% of Sb and 15.3, 19.9, and 23.8% of As from the agricultural soil, with CA being the most efficient reagent for the soil washing. These organic acids also led to pH decline and macronutrients losses. Fraction analysis using a sequential extraction procedure showed that the three organic acids targeted and decreased the specifically sorbed (F2) (by 19.3–37.6% and 2.41–23.5%), amorphous iron oxide associated (F3) (by 49.1–61.2% and 51.2–70.2%), and crystallized iron oxide associated (F4) (by 12.3–26.0% and 26.1–29.1%) Sb and As. The leachability of Sb and As, as well as their concentrations and bioconcentration factor (BCF) in vegetables reduced due to the soil washing. It demonstrated that the bioavailability of both the elements was decreased by the organic acids washing. The concentrations of Sb and As in typical vegetable species cultivated in CA washed soil were less than the threshold value for consumption safety, while those in OA and TA washed soils were still higher than the value, suggesting that only CA is a potential washing reagent in soil washing for Sb- and As-contaminated agricultural soil.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 2022JJ30101), the Open Fund Project of Hunan Key Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Biological Resources in the Nanyue Mountainous Region (No. 2021HSKFJJ033), the Scientific Research Project of Zunyi Normal University (No. Zunshi BS[2023]17, Zunshi BS[2019]30, and Zunshi BS[2019]33), the Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (No. 21B0628), and the Key Project of Guizhou Education Department (No. Qian-Jiao-He-KY-Zi[2019]080).The authors are also extremely thankful to the editors and anonymous reviewers that work in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environment, Zunyi Normal University, Zunyi, 563006, People’s Republic of China

    Jiumei Long, Zhigang Huang, Ye Xiao, Hanxi Xiao & Dongsheng Zhou

  2. College of Life Sciences, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang, 421008, People’s Republic of China

    Jiumei Long & Binyan Huang

  3. Changde Ecological Environment Bureau, Changde, 415000, People’s Republic of China

    Di Tan

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  1. Jiumei Long
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Contributions

JL, DT, ZH, and DZ contributed to the study conceptualization, project administration, funding acquisition, and supervision. YX, HX, and BH contributed to investigation, methodology, and formal analysis. JL and DT contributed to the validation and data curation. JL and DZ were the major contributors in writing the manuscript, and all authors commented on previous versions and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dongsheng Zhou.

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Long, J., Tan, D., Huang, Z. et al. Washing antimony and arsenic from agricultural soil with eco-friendly organic acids and the relevant bioavailability assessment. Environ Geochem Health 46, 19 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-023-01787-2

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