Arsenic and Heavy Metal Accumulation and Risk Assessment in Soils around Mining Areas: The Urad Houqi Area in Arid Northwest China as an Example.

ABSTRACT: Mining activities make important contributions to economic growth, but they can also produce massive amounts of solid waste, such as tailings and metal accumulations. Taking the Urad Houqi mining area in Inner Mongolia as the study area, this study systematically assessed the contamination risk of arsenic and heavy metals in the soils of the study area and explored the contamination characteristics in a key polymetallic mining area. For the whole study area, based on the Nemerow comprehensive pollution method, almost half of the investigated sites were contaminated, and the most contaminated site was Urad Houqi Qianzhen Mineral Concentration Co., Ltd. (Bayannaoer, China), a cooperation between the lead and zinc mining industry. The assessment results indicated that Cd and As were the eleme

SUBMITTER: Song S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6267203 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature