Human Exposure Pathways of Heavy Metals in a Lead-Zinc Mining Area, Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

Heavy metal pollution is becoming a serious issue in developing countries such as China, and the public is increasingly aware of its adverse health impacts in recent years. We assessed the potential health risks in a lead-zinc mining area and attempted to identify the key exposure pathways. We evaluated the spatial distributions of personal exposure using indigenous exposure factors and field monitoring results of water, soil, food, and indoor and outdoor air samples. The risks posed by 10 metals and the contribution of inhalation, ingestion and dermal contact pathways to these risks were estimated. Human hair samples were also analyzed to indicate the exposure level in the human body. Our results show that heavy metal pollution may pose high potential health risks to local residents, especially in the village closest to the mine (V1), mainly due to Pb, Cd and Hg. Correspondingly, the residents in V1 had higher Pb (8.14 mg/kg) levels in hair than those in the other two villages. Most of the estimated risks came from soil, the intake of self-produced vegetables and indoor air inhalation. This study highlights the importance of site-specific multipathway health risk assessments in studying heavymetal exposures in China.

Isotopic ratio based source apportionment of children's blood lead around coking plant area

“…1), indicating children living much closer to the coking plant were more likely to experience lead exposure. Similar decreasing trend from the source location was previously reported in other studies in a leadzinc mining area (Qu et al, 2012) and an e-waste recycling town in China (Zheng et al, 2008). It is worth mentioning that, the highest blood lead concentration occurred to the child who living 2 km away from the coking plant, could be mainly attributed to the reason that the family was located downwind the coking plant.…”

Health risks from the exposure of children to As, Se, Pb and other heavy metals near the largest coking plant in China

“…Inhalation exposure and dermal contact contributed little. Compared with a previous study (Qu et al, 2012), the results found that the contribution of different exposure pathways was similar to the village in the previous study which was closest to the mine area. The local children's exposure to As mainly occurred through staple food ingestion and indoor air inhalation exposure, and home indoor air contributed more than school indoor air (Fig.…”

“…Compared with previous results (Qu et al, 2012), except for the site-specific contaminants and lifestyle, the higher non-carcinogenic risks in this study could also be explained by the fact that more toxic metal(loid)s in the integrated exposure pathway were taken into consideration for the health effect in this study. Furthermore, based on the questionnaire-survey on the dietary and behavior patterns, the children preferred local food, which has relative higher contents of heavy metals and metalloids.…”

“…Previous studies have conducted human health risk evaluations of heavy metals through various exposure pathways (Baastrup et al, 2008;Hough et al, 2004;Man et al, 2010;Mari et al, 2009), but little research on the key exposure route has been performed (Qu et al, 2012), with even less focus on coking plants due to the lack of systematic multipathway risk analyses. Therefore, studying the contaminant levels of environmental media around coking areas and assessing the aggregated exposure to heavy metals and metalloids via various environmental media and pathways are necessary.…”

“…Human health risk assessment is widely identified as a way to estimate the nature and probability of adverse health effects in humans who may be exposed to pollutants and to present risk information to the decision maker (Qu et al, 2012). Hazard quotients (HQ), formalized by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), are widely used to characterize the non-cancer risk posed by pollutants (Granero and Domingo, 2002;Mari et al, 2009).…”