Chemical speciation and risk assessment of cadmium in soils around a typical coal mining area of China

Siwei Cheng; Guijian Liu; Chuncai Zhou; Ruoyu Sun

doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2018.05.022

Chemical speciation and risk assessment of cadmium in soils around a typical coal mining area of China

Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2018 Sep 30:160:67-74. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2018.05.022. Epub 2018 May 21.

Authors

Siwei Cheng¹, Guijian Liu², Chuncai Zhou³, Ruoyu Sun⁴

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and the Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China; State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, Shaanxi, China.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and the Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China; State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, Shaanxi, China. Electronic address: lgj@ustc.edu.cn.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and the Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
⁴ Institute of Surface-Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.

PMID: 29793203
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2018.05.022

Abstract

The distribution characteristics of Cadmium (Cd) fractions in soils around a coal mining area of Huaibei coalfield were investigated, with the aim to assess its ecological risk. The total Cd concentrations in soils ranged from 0.05 to 0.87 mg/kg. The high percentage of phyto-available Cd (58%) when redox or base-acid equilibria changed. Soil pH was found to be a crucial factor affecting soil Cd fraction, and carbonate-bound Cd can be significantly affected by both organic matter and pH of soils. The static ecological evaluation models, including potential ecological risk index (PERI), geo-accumulation index (I_geo) and risk assessment code (RAC), revealed a moderate soil Cd contamination and prensented high Cd exposure risk in studied soils. However, the dynamic evaluation of Cd risk, determined using a delayed geochemical hazard (DGH), suggested that our studied soils can be classified as median-risk with a mean probability of 24.79% for Cd DGH. These results provide a better assessment for the risk development of Cd contamination in coal mining areas.

Keywords: Cadmium; Chemical speciation; Ecological risk assessment; Soil contamination.

MeSH terms

Cadmium / analysis*
Cadmium / chemistry
Carbonates / chemistry
China
Coal Mining
Ecosystem
Environmental Monitoring
Risk Assessment
Soil Pollutants / analysis*
Soil Pollutants / chemistry

Substances

Carbonates
Soil Pollutants
Cadmium