The impact of heavy metals in water from abandoned mine on human health
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The impact of heavy metals in water from abandoned mine on human health Eva Singovszka1 · Magdalena Balintova1 · Natalia Junakova1 Received: 18 December 2019 / Accepted: 8 April 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The present study was conducted to investigate the heavy metal (Mn, Cu, Zn, As, and Cd) concentration of surface water in Smolnik creek in Slovakia. Furthermore, the study was aimed to determine the potential environmental health risk that the heavy metal concentration poses to the public. The values of the ecological potential index for the water in the study area were more than 600, reflecting a very high risk from the water body posed by these metals. Thus, this was also the reason to examine the impact of these heavy metals on the health of the population. Based on the heavy metal concentration, health risk assessments such as the chronic daily intake and hazard quotient (HQ) were calculated. Results showed that the daily intake of the heavy metals from all five samples taken from Smolnik creek was lower among adults than among children for two pathways of exposure. The non-carcinogenic hazard quotients of heavy metals in the studied area were higher among adults than among children. At all five sites, the HQ values for dermal exposure for adults were higher than 1. The HQ values for exposure through ingestion for adults and children were higher than 10 for almost all sites, indicating a disaster situation. Keywords Heavy metals · Acid mine drainage · Human health · Health risk assessment
1 Introduction Heavy metals, as specific non-biodegradable contaminants, accumulate in living organisms, and at low levels of concentration, they already cause various serious diseases and disorders. Moreover, they can enter into surface and groundwater and thereby contaminate and contribute to deterioration of the quality of drinking water and water used for irrigation [2, 16, 27]. The biggest portion of heavy metals settles in river and reservoir sediment [3, 31, 32]. In recent years, environmental scientists have been focused on the examination of water pollution from heavy metals [9, 21, 31]. Heavy metals can cause great environmental damage if they occur under certain conditions allowing them to accumulate to a toxic level [24].
Some metals (Cu, Zn) are essential for proper body growth and support in living organisms, but these elements become toxic at high concentrations. However, other metals (Cd, Mn, As) are very toxic and dangerous to human life. Zinc, for example, causes sideroblastic anaemia [24]. At very low concentrations, cadmium is a very strong toxin whose accumulation in tissues can cause infertility, organ dysfunction, damage, and cell death. The occurrence of arsenic in its organic form is less harmful to health, but in the form of inorganic compounds, especially in water, is very toxic [25]. If manganese occurs in higher concentration in surface water, it can lead to mental illness, including Alzheimer’s disease and manganism [39]. Many methods and methodologies (geoaccumulatio
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