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Effect of Rice Straw- and Bamboo-Derived Biochar on Pollution Controlling and Health Risks of Heavy Metals in a Rice-Rape-Corn Rotation Area of Eastern China

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Abstract

Potential human health risk with agricultural food consumption grown in heavy metal–contaminated soil has rarely been investigated. A field experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of rice straw biochar and bamboo biochar on Cd/Cu phytoavailability, stabilization, and human health risk with crop consumption grown in contaminated soil. In this study, rice straw biochar and bamboo biochar were applied to contaminated soil (at the rate of 1.125 × 104 and 2.25 × 104 kg·ha−1) to suppress Cd/Cu bioavailability and thereby mitigating their accumulation in rice, rape, and corn. The results showed that biochar application had significantly reduced DTPA extractable Cd/Cu content in contaminated soil, especially the high dosage addition. Biochar application considerably influenced chemical fraction of Cd/Cu, which was notably increased in residual fraction and decreased in exchangeable fraction of Cd/Cu in biochar-amended soil. Compared to the control treatment, biochar application had significantly reduced Cd/Cu concentration in rice, corn, and rape seed, respectively. Hazard quotients (HQ) associated with rice, corn, and rape consumption were significantly reduced in biochar-amended soil. Consequentially, human cancer risk (HCR) value for Cd associated with rice consumption was significantly reduced by 27.70% with bamboo biochar (at the rate of 2.25 × 104 kg·ha−1) treatment. The possible mechanisms in reducing HQ and HCR were due to biochar efficiency to decrease bioavailable Cd, promote the Cd immobilization, and suppress the crop uptake. In conclusion, these results highlighted the potential for biochar to mitigate the phytoavailability and accumulation of heavy metals and thereby reducing heavy metals exposure associated with rice consumption. Thus, biochar is a promising eco-friendly material to be used to diminish HQ and HCR in soil crop system.

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Data Availability

The dataset used and/or analyzed in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was supported by National Key R & D Program of China (2016YFD0800401), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41907066), and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (2018M630681).

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  1. Yutong Zong and Qing Xiao contributed to the work equally and should be regarded as co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Yutong Zong, Qing Xiao & Shenggao Lu

  2. Department of Soil Science, University College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, 63100, Pakistan

    Zaffar Malik

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  1. Yutong Zong
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Contributions

Yutong Zong: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, data curation, and writing—original draft, review, and editing. Qing Xiao: investigation, methodology, date curation, and writing—original draft. Zaffar Malik: review. Shenggao Lu: conceptualization, project administration, supervision, funding acquisition, and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Shenggao Lu.

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Zong, Y., Xiao, Q., Malik, Z. et al. Effect of Rice Straw- and Bamboo-Derived Biochar on Pollution Controlling and Health Risks of Heavy Metals in a Rice-Rape-Corn Rotation Area of Eastern China. Water Air Soil Pollut 233, 496 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-022-05957-3

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