Concentration and potential source identification of trace elements in wet atmospheric precipitation of Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the concentration of trace elements in wet atmospheric precipitation samples collected at six stations in Shiraz, southwest of Iran and identify their possible sources. In this study, 36 rainwater samples were collected from five urban stations and one suburban station during the rainy season spanning 2016 to 2017. Samples were analyzed for 19 trace elements using inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). Principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax-normalized rotation was used to identify potential sources of the elements measured in the wet atmospheric precipitation. Crustal enrichment factors (EFs) were also calculated, using Al as the reference element, to determine possible effects of human activities on element levels. Results showed that Al, with a mean concentration of 429.6 μg/l, had the highest measured concentration. The average concentrations of Fe, Zn, Mn, Ba, Cu, Pb and Ni were 305.7, 62.8, 23.9, 21.1, 14.4, 10.3 and 4.1 μg/l, respectively. The pH of the analyzed samples ranged from 4.5 to 6.9, with an average of 3.5. EF analyses showed that samples were not enriched with Fe, Ba, Li, Co, Cr or Mn but were fairly to extremely enriched with Zn, Cu, Pb and Ni. PCA resulted in four factors with eigenvalues greater than unity, which explained 78.8% of total variance.

Assessing oxidative stress resulting from environmental exposure to metals (Oids) in a middle Eastern population

“…The present cross-sectional study was implemented in Shiraz, the capital of Fars province and the sixth most populous city in Iran, with approximately 1.8 million inhabitants smaller than Tehran, capital of Iran (Mirzaei et al, 2018;Rafiee et al, 2016Rafiee et al, , 2018b. The city is enclosed by the mountains on its North, East, and Southeast sides, restricting air circulation.…”

“…The city is enclosed by the mountains on its North, East, and Southeast sides, restricting air circulation. In addition, there is an industrial park on the Southside of the city, which along with traffic congestion, has contributed to elevating air pollution in the city (Mirzaei et al, 2018;Shahsavani et al, 2017).…”

Influence of synthetic wastewater on entrapped air on the isotactic and atactic polypropylene microplastic surfaces

“…The municipal wastewater collection system is an initial source of contact with MPs and urban wastewater. The MPs in facial scrubber, toothpaste and personal care products or fragments of plastic debris from households, roads, industries and airborne resources enter into the sewer systems where they are mixed with raw wastewater containing oils, surfactants, chemicals, soil particles and nano-/microparticle metals that can adsorb onto the MPs surfaces [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]. These adsorbed materials onto the hydrophobic surfaces of plastic particles can change their properties in such a way that they are not responding properly during wastewater treatment phases such as membrane filtration or flotation [27,28].…”

Toxic heavy metals in rainwater samples of Tehran

“…Concentrations of heavy metals in wet deposition samples (µg l − 1 ) at different sites in Tehran metropolitan area Saeedi and Pajooheshfar (2012). analyzed rainwater samples at an urban site in Tehran for chemical composition, pH, inorganic species and dissolved heavy metals reporting mean concentrations of 51.9 µg l − 1 for Zn and extremely high for Pb (405.7 µg l − 1 ), while other studies in Shiraz(Mirzaei et al, 2018), Ahvaz(Moaref et al, 2014) and Zanjan(Farahmandkia et al, 2010) reported comparable levels of Cu, Cd, Pb and Zn to those in Tehran (Table2). Concentrations of wet deposition samples at 13 sites around the Lake Urmia basin were found in the range of1.6-9.2 µg l − 1 for Cu, 7.7-71.2 µg l − 1 for Zn and 0.1-2.6 µg l − 1 for Pb (Ahmady-Birgani et al, 2020).…”