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Occurrence, source apportionment, and carcinogenic risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in urban road dusts in Shanghai

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Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), as a class of important environmental pollutants, have received considerable concern due to their widespread existence and biological toxicity. The main purpose of this study was to determine concentrations, spatial distribution, possible sources, and potential health risk of PAHs in urban road dust in Shanghai, China. The concentration of Σ26PAHs ranged from 53.0 to 28,700 ng g−1 in road dust samples from Shanghai, which is at the low to medium level compared with other areas around the world. PAHs with 4–5 rings were predominant components in road dust. The level of PAHs in road dust was significantly higher than those in soil and river sediment in Shanghai. Six possible sources of PAHs were apportioned by PMF model. The contribution of pyrogenic PAHs accounted for 91.3% of the total PAHs in road dusts. The motor vehicular emission, natural gas, and coal combustion were main sources for urban road dust PAHs from Shanghai. Four dibenzopyrene (DBP) isomers were contributed averagely 75% of total TEQBaP concentration. DBalP, BaP, DBaiP, BbF, and DBA were main contributors to total carcinogenic potency, which totally contributed from 69.6 to 91.8% (median 89.1%) to total TEQBaP in urban road dusts of Shanghai. The results of incremental lifetime carcinogenic risk (ILCR) assessment showed that the total risk values exposed to 24 PAHs in road dust were lower than 10−4 at all sampling sites, indicating that exposure to dust-bound PAHs at present level was unlikely to result in high carcinogenic risk for both children and adults in Shanghai.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported jointly by the National Key Research and Development Plan (2019YFC1805800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41877377,41907318), Program of Shanghai Academic/Technology Research Leader (18XD1424100), the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal of Science and Technology Commission (19DZ1205300,19010500200), and the “Shu Guang” project supported by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Shanghai Education Development Foundation (19SG35X).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Xue-Tong Wang, Rui Fu, Ying Zhou, Cheng-Lin Wang, Guo-Fa Ren & Hui Li

  2. Shanghai Institute of Quality Inspection and Technical Research, Shanghai, 200040, China

    Ying Zhou

  3. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Risk Assessment and Control on Chemical Process, School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200237, China

    Xiao-Li Wang

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  1. Xue-Tong Wang
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Contributions

Xue-Tong Wang: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft, writing—review, and editing. Rui Fu: formal analysis, visualization, writing—original draft. Ying Zhou: investigation, formal analysis, writing—original draft. Cheng-Lin Wang: investigation, methodology, formal analysis, writing—original draft. Guo-Fa Ren: methodology, supervision, writing—review and editing. Xiao-Li Wang: conceptualization, supervision, writing—review and editing. Hui Li: conceptualization; funding acquisition, project administration; supervision, writing—review and editing.

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Figure S1. Box plot of relative contributions of individual PAH species to total PAHs in urban road dust from Shanghai.

Figure S2. The relative contributions of PAHs with 2 – 7 rings in urban road dust from Shanghai.

Figure S3. The relative contributions of 4 DBP isomers to Σ4DBPs in urban road dust from Shanghai.

Figure S4. Factor profiles (% of species total) obtained from PMF model.

Table S1. The meteorological data of Shanghai during the sampling period.

Table S2. The abbreviations of 26 PAHs, surrogate and internal standards used in the study.

Table S3. Concentrations (ng g−1) of PAHs in urban and suburban soil and river sediment from Shanghai.

Table S4. Concentrations (ng g–1) of PAHs in urban dust from different areas in recent studies around the world.

Table S5. Concentrations (ng g–1) of Σ26PAHs, Σ16PAHs and Σ4DBPs in road dusts from six sampling areas.

Table S6. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients among the concentrations of PAHs and TOC in urban road dust from Shanghai.

Table S7. TEQBaP concentrations (ng g–1) of PAHs in road dust from Shanghai.

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Wang, T., Fu, R., Zhou, Y. et al. Occurrence, source apportionment, and carcinogenic risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in urban road dusts in Shanghai. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 65621–65632 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15532-8

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