Urban geochemistry and potential human health risks in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires: PAHs and PCBs in soil, street dust, and bulk deposition

Abstract

Soil, street dust, and bulk deposition (dry and wet deposition) were collected in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (MABA), Argentina, to assess the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) pollution and the potential risks to human health. Compared with other countries, the mean concentration of PAHs and PCBs in surface soils, street dust and bulk deposition of MABA were at a low or moderate level. Average PAHs and PCBs concentrations in bulk deposition (5.7 ± 5.1 and 0.41 ± 0.25 µg g, respectively) were five and ten times higher than those of soil (1.08 ± 0.98 and 0.02 ± 0.01 µg g) and street dust (1.2 ± 0.95 and 0.04 ± 0.03 µg g), respectively. Different compositional profiles, observed in the three matrices for both groups of contaminants, could be attributed to dissimilar source contribution, partition processes between gas and particulate phases, and transformation. The most contaminated bulk deposition presented higher values for cancer and non-cancer risks relative to soil and street dust. In all matrices, non-carcinogenic risks were below the safety threshold (HI < 1). Regarding carcinogenic risks, exposure to both bulk deposition and soil indicated a moderated potential for cancerous development (Incremental lifetime cancer risk ~ 3.0 × 10).

Pollution status and human health risk assessment of potentially toxic elements and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in urban street dust of Tyumen city, Russia

“…At the same time, street dust particles are a source of pollutants in roadside soils (Prokof'eva et al 2017;Ró _ zański et al 2017;Pariente et al 2019), which can re-enter the atmosphere through resuspension (Jordanova et al 2014) or migrate with surface runoff and stormwater (Calvillo et al 2015;Liu et al 2016). Numerous studies are devoted to the status of various pollutants, primarily PTEs and PAHs, in street dust in some of the world's largest megacities, industrial production centres (Liu et al 2007;Saeedi et al 2012;Acosta et al 2014;Yu et al 2014;Soltani et al 2015;Bandowe and Nkansah 2016;Tang et al 2017;Men et al 2018;Cappelletti et al 2019), cities, and towns (Majumdar et al 2017;Ghanavati et al 2019;Zhaoyong et al 2019). The results of these studies have shown that accumulation of pollutants in street dust and near road environments is influenced by a wide range of factors, including population density, traffic, degree of soil sealing, age and type of automobiles, climate, and geological conditions of a particular territory (Charlesworth et al 2003;Shi et al 2010;Wei et al 2010;Zhang et al 2015;De Silva et al 2016;Trujillo-González et al 2016;Yan et al 2018).…”

Polychlorinated biphenyls in indoor dust from urban dwellings of Lahore, Pakistan: Congener profile, toxicity equivalency, and human health implications

“…The total CR and HQ risks for adults and toddler were 3.16 × 10 −05 and 4.32 × 10 −04 , and 7.90 × 10 −07 and 1.08 × 10 −05 , respectively. When these results were compared with the lifetime cancer risk threshold established by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) (very low (≤10 −6 ) to very high (≥10 −1 )), it was found that the adults were prone from low to moderate cancer risk as compared to toddlers, which were susceptible to the relatively high lifetime cancer risk 40,67 . For the non‐carcinogenic risk, the measured values of total HQ were found to be lower than the tolerable limit of ≤1 8 .…”

“…For the non‐carcinogenic risk, the measured values of total HQ were found to be lower than the tolerable limit of ≤1 8 . Overall, the toddlers were potentially more exposed to PCB contamination and were at high risk as compared to the adults because of their lower body weight, less developed immune system, frequent hand to mouth activities and crawling 67 …”

Potential sources and health risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in street dusts of Karaj urban area, northern Iran

“…These particles behave similar to atmospheric aerosols and may be re-suspended onto or re-deposited from the atmosphere [1]. As street dust consists of large proportion of fine particles, organic or inorganic contaminants in street dust can easily enter the human body particularly via inhalation, ingestion or direct absorption by skin [2,3]. Exposure to street dust of respirable size itself presents a health risk and can lead to a range of lung diseases.…”