Heavy metal pollution assessment in agricultural soils of Kermanshah province, Iran

Potentially Toxic Element Content in Arid Agricultural Soils in South Iran

“…The PTE levels obtained in this studied were compared with data reported by other studies carried out for agricultural soils in Iran (Table 2). When compared with the results of previous studies in Iran e.g., [13,40,41,[43][44][45][46][47], average values are similar or lower to indicate by them, probably due to some of these studies were carried out near to industrial areas e.g., [40,41]. Results showed significant enrichment of Cr and Ni in studied agricultural lands, although with similar values as indicated by Doabi et al [13] for agricultural areas in Kermanshah province, Western Iran.…”

“…When compared with the results of previous studies in Iran e.g., [13,40,41,[43][44][45][46][47], average values are similar or lower to indicate by them, probably due to some of these studies were carried out near to industrial areas e.g., [40,41]. Results showed significant enrichment of Cr and Ni in studied agricultural lands, although with similar values as indicated by Doabi et al [13] for agricultural areas in Kermanshah province, Western Iran. When compared with other agricultural areas from arid/semiarid environments e.g., [3,[48][49][50][51][52], our studied soils showed similar values to studies from other regions.…”

“…In general, it seems that a "geogenic factor" is the most significant source of PTE in the studied soils, as indicated by component 1 and previously indicated by Moghtaderi et al (2018) for industrial areas [9]. Component 2 could be called as "anthropogenic factor" and was constituted by Cd, Ni, P, and Pb with a source from anthropogenic origins, such as industrial/transport emissions or agricultural practices (e.g., agricultural machinery, pesticides, and fertilizers) [13,36,42,48,59]. The presence of P with these PTEs in this component reinforces the possibility that agricultural malpractice could be the source of these elements, such as phosphate fertilizers and uncontrolled uses of pesticides [8,48,51,59,60].…”

“…Regarding the studied PTE, only Cr and Ni showed higher levels that exceeded the Iranian Environmental Quality Standards for agricultural lands (200 and 110 mg•kg −1 , respectively) [13], and also the Canadian soil quality guidelines (CSQG) for agricultural soils (64 and 45 mg•kg −1 , respectively) [39]. Although these elevated levels can be related to the geogenic origin, according to the higher background levels of these elements (74.5 and 77 mg•kg −1 , respectively), it's also widely known that Cr and Ni can be related to fertilizers, limestone and manures [40][41][42][43].…”

“…In accordance with several previous studies [17,[22][23][24], different environmental indices were used to assess soil contamination on the basis of PTE concentrations, including the contamination factor (Cf), enrichment factor (EF), the modified degree of contamination (mCd), and the potential ecological risk index (PERI). These indexes are widely used in different soils since can be used to assess the presence/intensity of a contaminant deposition on sediments or surface soils, allowing a quick and robust assessment of soil contamination e.g., [8,9,13,17,[22][23][24]. As indicated by [25], these calculation methods allow converting numerical results into broad descriptive bands of pollution ranging from low to high intensity.…”