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Heavy metals concentration, pollution indexes, and health risk assessment of urban road dust in the historical center of Havana, Cuba

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Abstract

In recent years, the historical center of Old Havana has been under a serious restoration movement which could increase the heavy metal concentrations in street dusts and thus severely impact humans in the area. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study the heavy metal concentrations, pollution indexes, and health risk assessment of urban road dusts from the city in order to assess if this restoration movement is harmful to the citizens and visitors. Street road dust samples were collected at 33 stations for the determination of some heavy metals (Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Pb) concentrations using an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) instrument. The mean concentration values of the elements Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Pb were 7.0 mg.kg−1, 60.6 mg.kg−1, 73.6 mg.kg−1, 548.7 mg.kg−1, and 60.8 mg.kg−1, respectively. Zn and Pb showed higher values of the background. The study of the enrichment factor (EF), the pollution index (IP), and the integral pollution index (IPI) showed some stations with high values of contamination near construction places. Zn was identified as the major pollutant and correlated to the biggest construction places of the municipality at that moment. However, the hazard index (HI) and carcinogenic risk (CR) values do not show the risk of getting non-carcinogenic or carcinogenic diseases associated with the analyzed pollutants. Therefore, it was safely concluded that the big reconstruction movement does not represent a health problem.

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Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This study was financially supported by Havana University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Superior de Tecnologías y Ciencias Aplicadas (InSTEC), Universidad de La Habana, Ave. Salvador Allende No. 1110, Quinta de los Molinos, 10400, La Habana, Cuba

    Oscar Díaz Rizo, Amaya O. Casanova Díaz, Arianna G. Torres Ramos & Dayron Ramos López

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  1. Oscar Díaz Rizo
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  2. Amaya O. Casanova Díaz
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  3. Arianna G. Torres Ramos
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  4. Dayron Ramos López
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Contributions

All authors read and approved the final manuscript. The authors contributed to the present work as follows. Oscar Díaz Rizo: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, data curation, writing original draft, review and editing, validation and visualization. Amaya O. Casanova Díaz: formal analysis, data curation, writing original draft, review and editing, validation and visualization. Arianna G. Torres Ramos: sampling and sample preparation, data collection, data analysis. Dayron Ramos López: sampling and sample preparation, data collection, data analysis.

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Correspondence to Oscar Díaz Rizo.

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Highlights

• Urban dust pollution

• Havana historical center

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Díaz Rizo, O., Casanova Díaz, A.O., Torres Ramos, A.G. et al. Heavy metals concentration, pollution indexes, and health risk assessment of urban road dust in the historical center of Havana, Cuba. Environ Monit Assess 195, 349 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10875-2

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