Level and Contamination Assessment of Environmentally Sensitive Elements in Smaller than 100 ?m Street Dust Particles from Xining, China

Ni Zhao, Xinwei Lu and Shigang Chao
Additional contact information
Ni Zhao: School of Tourism and Environment, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China
Xinwei Lu: School of Tourism and Environment, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China
Shigang Chao: School of Tourism and Environment, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China

IJERPH, 2014, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: Concentrations of the environmentally sensitive elements (ESEs) As, Co, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, V and Zn in smaller than 100 ?m street dust particles from Xining were measured using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and their contamination levels were assessed based on enrichment factor ( EF ), geoaccumulation index ( I geo ) and pollution load index ( PLI ). The concentrations of As, Co, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, V and Zn in smaller than 100 ?m street dust particles from Xining are 0.1–0.8, 2.7–10.9, 0.7–5.2, 0.3–1.1, 0.6–2.5, 1.2–11.1, 0.7–1.3 and 0.4–2.9 times the background values of Qinghai soil, respectively. The calculated EF and I geo values reveal the order Co > Pb > Cu > Zn > V > Ni > Mn > As. The EF and I geo values of Co, Cu, Pb and Zn are higher indicating that there is considerable pollution by these elements in smaller than 100 ?m street dust particles, especially for Co. The EF and I geo of Mn, Ni and V are lower and the assessment results indicate an absence of distinct Mn, Ni and V pollution in the studied samples. The mean value of PLI site is 1.14, indicating a slightly pollution in the whole city of Xining. The order of PLI area for the five tested districts is Center District (CD) > East District (ED) > West District (WD) > North District (ND) > South District (SD), showing that ESEs pollution in the South District is the lightest while it is the highest in the Central District.

Keywords: street dust; environmentally sensitive elements; enrichment factor; contamination assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/3/2536/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/3/2536/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:11:y:2014:i:3:p:2536-2549:d:33539

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().