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Heavy metals, GIS, ELCR, Hazard quotient. A survey was made to analyze the geostatistical (GIS) distribution of the health risk of toxic trace metal(loid)s in the industrial soil located in the facility of an abandoned paints manufacturing company. A total of eighty surface soil samples were collected, and their concentrations determined. The mean concentration values of the elements were 7.8; 2.7; 55; 49; 0.21; 56; 114; and 239 mg/kg for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn, respectively. There was no non-carcinogenic health risk from the soil samples for adults, but it was hazardous soil for children with the excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) values exceeding the reference value of 10-4 for all studied samples. Most contributing toxic metal(loid)s to non-carcinogenic risk were Cr and As, whereas Pb and As were most responsible for cancer risk. Geospatial mapping of the hazard index (HI) and ELCR localized different hotspots seriously polluted by toxic metal(loid)s, which pose a significant risk in the area. These hotspots coincided with the evidence of transport-related activities and spillage of chemicals in the past. This GIS spatial distribution study could be a valuable aid in remediation planning.

Heavy metal(loid)s (HMs) play an important role in economic development since they are used in various branches of industry. However, all industrial activities emit HMs into the environment, where they are no longer useful but potentially toxic. It has been observed that HMs enter the soil and sediment, and potential human health risk may arise due to their excessive accumulation. Having in mind the importance of assessing the risk due to HMs in these media, we analyzed published works in the last decade and created a summary of exposure factors in health risk models for HMs in soil and sediment. This analysis revealed a remarkable increase in the number of publications about health risk assessment of HMs, especially in the last few years. Since many differences in the values of the exposure factors and their distributions were noted, this study focused on elucidating these differences. Non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risk assessment models were evaluated through a deterministic approach that is prevalent in use, and a probabilistic one, which is gaining more and more attention in research. In the end, guided by the studied literature, we propose the values and distributions for the exposure factors.

This study collected agricultural surface soil samples from 200 sites in the district of Braničevo, located in the Carpathian Mountains – Pannonian Basin south of the Danube River (Serbia). The main objective was to determine the soil contamination by ten potentially toxic elements (As, B, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Zn) and evaluate the associated ecological risk via different indices. The physicochemical parameters, pH, organic carbon, water content, and soil texture were also analyzed. The mean values of most metal concentrations remained below their corresponding national target values, except for Mo and Ni. The main soil texture types were silt loam (40.5 %) and silty clay loam (34.5 %). According to the mean values, pollution load index (PLI) and potential ecological risk (RI) demonstrated that the soil in the study area was exposed to moderate pollution and moderate ecological risk, while enrichment factor (EF), geoaccumulation index (Igeo), and contamination factor (CF) revealed very high enrichment and contamination with Mo, implying the impact of anthropogenic activities. There was a lack of strong correlations among elements and soil properties, except for Cd and Corg, while moderate to strong positive inter-metal relationships suggested their common sources. The chemometric analysis illustrated the classification of sampling sites into two distinct clusters of spatial similarities according to higher and lower metal concentrations. Geospatial mapping identified a few areas of considerable ecological risk.

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