Health Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals Accumulated on PM 2.5 Fractioned Road Dust from Two Cities of Pakistan

Haseeb Tufail Moryani, Shuqiong Kong, Jiangkun Du and Jianguo Bao
Additional contact information
Haseeb Tufail Moryani: School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Shuqiong Kong: School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Jiangkun Du: School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Jianguo Bao: School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 19, 1-21

Abstract: The aim of this study is to identify and investigate levels of toxic heavy metals in PM 2.5 fractioned road dust to better understand the associated inhalation risk and potential health impacts. To achieve this aim, concentrations of seven traffic generated heavy metals (Cu, Pb, Zn, Cd, Ni, Sb, and Cr) were determined in the PM 2.5 fraction of road dust samples from four different locations (offices, residential, hospital, and school) in two cities (Karachi and Shikarpur) of Pakistan using ICP-MS. The average concentration values of heavy metals in Karachi were as follows: 332.9 mg/kg Cu, 426.6 mg/kg Pb, 4254.4 mg/kg Zn, 62.3 mg/kg Cd, 389.7 mg/kg Ni, 70.4 mg/kg Sb, 148.1 mg/kg Cr, whereas the average concentration values of heavy metals in Shikarpur were 245.8 mg/kg Cu, 538.4 mg/kg Pb, 8351.0 mg/kg Zn, 57.6 mg/kg Cd, 131.7 mg/kg Ni, 314.5 mg/kg Sb, 346.6 mg/kg Cr. The pollution level was assessed through two pollution indices enrichment factor (EF) and geoaccumulation index (I geo ). These indices showed moderate to extreme level pollution in studied areas of both cities. The health risk assessment through inhalation contact was conducted according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) model for children and adults. Both non-cancerous and cancerous risks were characterised in the road dust samples for each location. As yet, there is not a single study on the concentrations of heavy metals in PM 2.5 fractions of road dust in Karachi and Shikarpur, findings of this research will facilitate researchers for further investigations in current field.

Keywords: road dust; resuspension; toxic elements; inhalation; pollution assessment; cancer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/19/7124/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/19/7124/ (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:17:y:2020:i:19:p:7124-:d:421287

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 ().