Spatial distribution of heavy metals in soil around municipal solid waste incinerators at coastal plain and inland mountainous region in China

Abstract

Abstract Heavy metals released from incinerator stacks are considered as the potential sources in soils surrounding the MSWI plants. In this work, heavy metals in soils sampled at different sites around the two MSWI plants with different landforms and weather conditions, namely, windy coastal plain region in Eastern China and calm inland mountainous area in Western China, were investigated. The average concentrations of Cr, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn and Pb in soils at the coastal plain region were 274.21, 1053.47, 58755.9, 37.38, 90.60 and 40.53 mg/kg, in comparison with those of 224.0, 658.99, 39960.3, 31.72, 33.91 and 70.98 mg/kg in soils at the inland mountain region, respectively. Principal component analysis showed that Mn and Fe were presentd as background origin in soils surrounding both the incinerators. Cu, Zn and Pb distributions in the two studied regions were influenced by human activities. The application of pesticides contributed to Cu and Zn contaminations in soils surrounding the coast plain incinerator. Furthermore, the application of pesticides and local traffic had impacts on Cu distributions in soils surrounding the inland mountain incineration plant. The study highlighted that Pb was an important environmental indicator of MSWI air contamination. The source identification and spatial distributions of Pb indicated that the extent of soil contamination by heavy metals in the vicinity of a MSWI was highly ascribed to the stack emission. Furthermore, the terrain and meteorological conditions had a significant effect on heavy metal pollution distributions.