Contamination characteristics of heavy metals in a small-scale tanning area of southern China and their source analysis

  • PDF / 2,038,808 Bytes
  • 14 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
  • 47 Downloads / 318 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


(0123456789().,-volV) ( 01234567 89().,-volV)

ORIGINAL PAPER

Contamination characteristics of heavy metals in a smallscale tanning area of southern China and their source analysis Chaolan Zhang . Xianquan Cai . Zhilin Xia . Xiaodan Jin . Hao Wu

Received: 23 November 2019 / Accepted: 21 September 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Abstract Tanning industry has been identified as a significant source of heavy metals; however, heavy metals contamination in farmland soil due to smallscale tanning activities remains unstudied. Here, samples from topsoil, profile soil, water and sediments in the vicinity of a small-scale tanning area in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southern China, were collected to explore the contamination characteristics and source apportionment of Cd, Cr, Hg, As, Cu, Pb, Ni and Zn. The results show that the farmland soil was mainly contaminated by Cr and its content was 33.40–3830.00 mg kg-1. The highest level of Cr, Cd and Hg was above their thresholds, while the average contents of Cd, Cr, Pb and Hg exceeded the corresponding background Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-020-00732-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. C. Zhang  X. Cai School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China Z. Xia University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

levels. Moreover, enrichment of Cr in soil profiles and stream sediments were also observed, whose concentrations varied from 11.50 to 2590.00 mg kg-1 and 738.00 to 11,200.00 mg kg-1, respectively. Concentrations of Cr in top soils and soil profiles from farmland surrounding the stream were significantly higher than those from other areas, and the soils surrounding the stream were moderately to heavily polluted. The multivariate statistical analysis indicated that the heavy metals originated from traffic (Cu, Ni, Zn, Hg, and Pb), agriculture (Cr and Cd) and nature (As). Source apportionment with PMF model results showed that the relative contribution rates of heavy metals by traffic, tanning, agriculture, other industrial activities and natural sources were 16.00%, 18.88%, 20.88%, 22.04% and 22.20%, respectively. These findings indicate that small-scale tanning activities could also lead to heavy metal accumulation in the surrounding environment, which requires decisionX. Jin (&)  H. Wu (&) Environmental Protection Research Institute of Guangxi, Nanning 530022, China e-mail: [email protected] H. Wu e-mail: [email protected]

Z. Xia State Key Laboratory of Environmental Aquatic Chemistry, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China

123

Environ Geochem Health

makers to pay more attention and to develop effective remediation procedures. Keywords Small-scale tanning activities  Chromium  Heavy metal pollution  Farmland  Statistical and spatial analysis

Introduction The leather and its products represent an important regional e