Editorial: Understanding heavy metal pollution and control in the environment around metal tailings

Abstract

Editorial on the Research Topic Understanding heavy metal pollution and control in the environment around metal tailings Heavy metal pollution is a serious problem faced by global industrial development, which mainly comes from industrial pollution, traffic pollution and household garbage pollution. Due to the biological toxicity and radioactivity of heavy metals, once discharged into the atmosphere, water and soil, they will cause serious environmental pollution. In addition, if they enter the human body, they can cause multiple diseases, including cancers, neurological damage, and adverse reproductive outcomes. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the characteristics and source analysis of heavy metal pollution around metal mining and smelting enterprises for understanding the enrichment law of heavy metals and preventing heavy metal pollution. In this Research Topic, heavy metal pollution is studied from the aspects of harmfulness, migration characteristics and control measures. Here, we briefly review and summarize these articles.Zhang et al. studied the relationship between exposure to the heavy metal lead and liver fibrosis, using data obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2017-2020. Their study is the first to use liver elasticity to explore the relationship between liver fibrosis and blood lead level. The diagnostic accuracy for fibrosis has been greatly improved by using this new method. They demonstrated an association between blood lead level and liver fibrosis in individuals without known chronic liver disease. However, the causal relationship and underlying mechanism between lead and fibrosis requires further investigation.Xue et al. reported the release behavior of uranium in soil of uranium tailings dam through simulation experiment. They systematically explored the physical and chemical properties, distribution characteristics, state of occurrence, and law of migration and transformation of uranium in tailing ponds, which can predict the dynamic migration trend of uranium in tailing reservoir in the natural environment, and provide a theoretical basis for establishing an effective uranium tailing pollution prevention and control system. They selected nine soils at different depths in a decommissioned uranium tailing pond in Jiangxi Province to study their mineralogical properties and revealed the leaching law of uranium under natural rainfall conditions. They found the distribution characteristics of uranium are affected by the mineral composition, microscopic morphology and physical and chemical properties of uranium tailings. In static leaching experiments, acidic solutions, small particles, and high solid-to-liquid ratios all promote the release of uranium. In the