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Heavy metals (lead, cadmium and zinc) from street dust in Monterrey, Mexico: ecological risk index

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Abstract

Street dust is widely recognized as one of the major non-point sources of heavy metal pollution and represents an important pathway for human exposure. Concentrations of heavy metals in 41 samples of street dust from six municipalities’ sampled zones on the Monterrey Metropolitan Area in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, were evaluated. The results of concentrations of metals from the downtown, eastern, southern and southeast zones follow the order of lead > zinc > cadmium with only at the downtown and east zones not detecting the presence of cadmium in the samples collected. For the other zones, the order was zinc > lead > cadmium. The downtown zone is characterized by its commercial activity and vehicular traffic, reaching values of 1590 mg kg−1 of lead per each 0.450 m2 sampled on the averaged collected sample representative of an area of 25 m2. The non-impacted area showed concentrations of lead at 7.36 mg kg−1, cadmium 0.25 mg kg−1 and zinc 70.5 mg kg−1. Based on these values, the ecological risk indexes are within the moderate to the extremely high range of pollution in all zones except for the southwest. The potential ecological index shows that lead is present as a pollutant in all sampled points and contributes greatly to a very high ecological risk index observed in the downtown zone of the Monterrey Metropolitan Area.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from CONACYT (National Council for Science and Technology), México, scholarship No. 592974 is deeply appreciated. We thank Adriana Liñán Montes and Gloria L. Dimas Rivera from the Analytical Chemistry Laboratory of the Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León; R. Vidal Hinojosa N. and David Spielman, for their technical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Biotecnología, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Pedro de Alba y Manuel L. Barragán S/N, Ciudad Universitaria, 66455, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, Mexico

    D. Castillo-Nava, M. Elias-Santos, L. G. de la Riva-Solís, M. P. Vargas-Pérez, L. J. Galán-Wong & H. A. Luna-Olvera

  2. Centro de Investigación en Biotecnología y Nanotecnología (CIBYN), Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Km 10 Autopista al Aeropuerto Mariano Escobedo, PIIT Monterrey, 66629, Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico

    U. J. López-Chuken

  3. Laboratorio de Acuacultura, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Av. de los Rectores S/N, Ciudad Universitaria, 66455, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, Mexico

    A. Valdés-González

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  1. D. Castillo-Nava
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Correspondence to H. A. Luna-Olvera.

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Castillo-Nava, D., Elias-Santos, M., López-Chuken, U.J. et al. Heavy metals (lead, cadmium and zinc) from street dust in Monterrey, Mexico: ecological risk index. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 17, 3231–3240 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-020-02649-5

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