Tracing of Heavy Metals Embedded in Indoor Dust Particles from the Industrial City of Asaluyeh, South of Iran

Mahsa Tashakor, Reza Dahmardeh Behrooz, Seyed Reza Asvad and Dimitris G. Kaskaoutis
Additional contact information
Mahsa Tashakor: School of Geology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran 14155-6455, Iran
Reza Dahmardeh Behrooz: Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Zabol, Zabol 98615-538, Iran
Seyed Reza Asvad: Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources and Marine Science, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran 14115-111, Iran
Dimitris G. Kaskaoutis: Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development, National Observatory of Athens, Palaia Penteli, 15236 Athens, Greece

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 13, 1-19

Abstract: Assessment of indoor air quality is especially important, since people spend substantial amounts of time indoors, either at home or at work. This study analyzes concentrations of selected heavy metals in 40 indoor dust samples obtained from houses in the highly-industrialized Asaluyeh city, south Iran in spring and summer seasons (20 samples each). Furthermore, the health risk due to exposure to indoor air pollution is investigated for both children and adults, in a city with several oil refineries and petrochemical industries. The chemical analysis revealed that in both seasons the concentrations of heavy metals followed the order of Cr > Ni > Pb > As > Co > Cd. A significant difference was observed in the concentrations of potential toxic elements (PTEs) such as Cr, As and Ni, since the mean (±stdev) summer levels were at 60.2 ± 9.1 mg kg −1 , 5.6 ± 2.7 mg kg −1 and 16.4 ± 1.9 mg kg −1 , respectively, while the concentrations were significantly lower in spring (17.6 ± 9.7 mg kg −1 , 3.0 ± 1.7 mg kg −1 and 13.5 ± 2.4 mg kg −1 for Cr, As and Ni, respectively). Although the hazard index (HI) values, which denote the possibility of non-carcinogenic risk due to exposure to household heavy metals, were generally low for both children and adults (HI < 1), the carcinogenic risks of arsenic and chromium were found to be above the safe limit of 1 × 10 −4 for children through the ingestion pathway, indicating a high cancer risk due to household dust in Asaluyeh, especially in summer.

Keywords: potential toxic elements; household dust; petrochemicals; health risk; Asaluyeh; Persian Gulf (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/13/7905/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/13/7905/ (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:19:y:2022:i:13:p:7905-:d:849493

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 ().