Comparison of different methods for assessing heavy metal contamination in street dust of Xianyang City, NW China
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Comparison of different methods for assessing heavy metal contamination in street dust of Xianyang City, NW China Xingmin Shi • Jianhui Wang
Received: 20 July 2011 / Accepted: 20 August 2012 / Published online: 19 September 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract Street dust is one of the important indicators that reflect the status of urban environmental pollution. There are many studies of heavy metals contamination of street dust in capital cities; however, little attention has been paid to this kind of study in medium cities, including China. The dust samples were collected in the district of traffic crossroads in Xianyang city, Shaanxi Province. Pb, Cd, Cu, Ni, Zn, Cr and Mn concentrations were determined using atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). The results indicate that the concentrations of heavy metals are higher than the background values of soils in Shaanxi Province. The contamination level of heavy metals is assessed by potential ecological risk index (Er), geoaccumulation index (Igeo), enrichment factor (EF) and pollution index (Pi). The low Igeo, EF, Er, Pi and PIn (integrated pollution index) for Mn in street dusts indicate an absence of distinct Mn pollution. The high EF, Pi and PIn of Cu and Zn indicate that there is considerable Cu and Zn pollution. It is suggested that more attention should be paid to heavy metals contamination of Cu and Zn. The assessment results of Pi and PIn suggest that Pb, Ni and Cr present strong pollution; however, their EFs indicate that they cause moderate pollution and their Igeo indicates that they are unpolluted to moderately polluted. The contamination class value with different assessing methods is of the order: Pi & PIn [ EF [ Igeo [ Er.
X. Shi (&) College of Tourism and Environment, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710062, China e-mail: [email protected] J. Wang Department of Chemical Science, Xianyang Normal University, Xianyang, 712000, Shaanxi, China
Keywords Xianyang city Heavy metal assessment Street dust Pollution indices
Introduction Usually street dust is very harmful to the human body, because the dust usually carries toxic heavy metals (AI-Rajhi et al. 1996). Street dust is the significant pollutant in the urban environment (Tokalıoglu and Kartal 2006). Heavy metals mainly originate from traffic, industrial plants, road construction and resuspension of surrounding contaminated soil (Lu et al. 2009). Therefore, it is important to determine the origin and level of heavy metals in street dust. Many studies about street dust have risen in the last decades. Day published the papers ‘‘Lead in urban street dust’’ and first proposed the terminology of urban street dust (Day et al. 1975). Afterward, many authors have studied the heavy metals in the street dust, especially in developed economies and densely population cities (Charlesworth and Lees 1999; Li et al. 2001; Rasmussen et al. 2001; Akhter and Madany 1993; Kelly et al. 1996; Leharne et al. 1992). Charlesworth et al. (2003) found that, in general, the content of the heavy metals i
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