Multifaceted environmental risk assessment of beryllium, cadmium, nickel, and cobalt for soil contamination through PM10 on the city scale

Abstract

Risk assessment is the key process for environmental management and remediation of soil contamination. Metals, such as beryllium (Be), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni), and cobalt (Co) are considered important soil contaminants and environmental challenges, which cause a potential risk of harm to human health through inhalation exposure routes but show limitations regarding cross-discussion and in-depth analysis of previous works. We introduce a systematic and multidimensional perspective to assess the human health risk caused by four metals soil contamination via the 338 regional PM10 levels on a city scale from 2015 to 2021. As the significant characteristics, total carcinogenic risk (TCR), hazard index (HIn), and risk control level (RCL) are calculated for the detailed analysis of annual and seasonal performance. The inhalation is the main risk exposure pathway of Be, Ni, and Cd soil contamination. TCR and HIn show the lowest levels in 2021 among other years with all regions below the risk thresholds, and the RCLs are yearly increasing according to the different calculated methods by the annual average PM10. This refined study can provide a detailed strategy for the environmental risk assessment of metals soil contamination on a regional scale and promise desirable support for the protection of human health.