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Source, distribution, and health risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in urban street dust from Tianjin, China

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Abstract

To better assess and understand potential health risk of urban residents exposed to urban street dust, the total concentration, sources, and distribution of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in 87 urban street dust samples from Tianjin as a Chinese megacity that has undergone rapid urbanization were investigated. In the meantime, potential sources of PAHs were identified using the principal component analysis (PCA), and the risk of residents’ exposure to PAHs via urban street dust was calculated using the Incremental Lifetime Cancer Risk (ILCR) model. The results showed that the total PAHs (∑PAHs) in urban street dust from Tianjin ranged from 538 μg kg−1 to 34.3 mg kg−1, averaging 7.99 mg kg−1. According to PCA, the two to three- and four to six-ring PAHs contributed 10.3 and 89.7 % of ∑PAHs, respectively. The ratio of the sum of major combustion specific compounds (ΣCOMB) / ∑PAHs varied from 0.57 to 0.79, averaging 0.64. The ratio of Ant/(Ant + Phe) varied from 0.05 to 0.41, averaging 0.10; Fla/(Fla + Pyr) from 0.40 to 0.68, averaging 0.60; BaA/(BaA + Chry) from 0.29 to 0.51, averaging 0.38; and IcdP/(IcdP + BghiP) from 0.07 to 0.37, averaging 0.22. The biomass combustion, coal combustion, and traffic emission were the main sources of PAHs in urban street dust with the similar proportion. According to the ILCR model, the total cancer risk for children and adults was up to 2.55 × 10−5 and 9.33 × 10−5, respectively.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge that this work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China as a key project (grant no. 21037002) and the National Key Basic Research Program (973) of China (grant no. 2011CB503802).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Education (MOE) Key Laboratory of Pollution Processes and Environmental Criteria, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Binbin Yu, Xiujie Xie & Qixing Zhou

  2. Soil and Water Science Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611-0290, USA

    Lena Q. Ma

  3. Ministry of Education (MOE) Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Haidong Kan

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  1. Binbin Yu
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Correspondence to Qixing Zhou.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Yu, B., Xie, X., Ma, L.Q. et al. Source, distribution, and health risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in urban street dust from Tianjin, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 21, 2817–2825 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-013-2190-z

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