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Diagnosis and ecotoxicological risk assessment of 49 elements in sludge from wastewater treatment plants of Chongqing and Xiamen cities, China

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Abstract

Limited information about the sludge quality is a major constraint for its usage and proper disposal. This study investigated the occurrence of 49 elements in sludge from 11 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Chongqing and Xiamen cities of China. The concentration of 46-detected elements ranged from 16.2 μg kg−1 (Pt) to 55.0 g kg−1 (Al) on dry solid basis in the sludge. The enrichment factor of most of the elements was > 1.5, indicating their possible anthropogenic origin. The precious metals had considerably higher enrichment factor ranging from 56.3 to 200,000. Principal component analysis clustered the samples from Chongqing and Xiamen separately to suggest strong spatial variations. Contamination factor, pollution loading index, and integrated pollution degree were calculated to evaluate the elemental pollution risk. The pollution loading index indicated unpolluted to highly polluted levels of the elements in the sludge. In addition, results from the ecotoxicological risk index showed an individual low to very high ecotoxicological risk posed by eight metal(loid)s (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn) in the WWTPs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to appreciate the technical support from Mr. YiJun Yan and the sampling support from Prof. Shaohua Chen.

Funding

This work was funded by the STS Project of Fujian-CAS (2016T3004), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, Chinese Academy of Sciences-The World Academy of Sciences (CAS-TWAS) president’s fellowship program for developing countries, and Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2016280).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China

    Fidèle Suanon, Qiaoqiao Chi, Xiaoyong Yang, Hongjie Wang, Azhar Rashid, Bahareh Asefi, Chang-Ping Yu & Qian Sun

  2. Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, Republic of Benin

    Fidèle Suanon & Hongjie Wang

  3. Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Tarnab, G.T. Road, Peshawar, Pakistan

    Azhar Rashid

  4. Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry and Environment, University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, Republic of Benin

    Daouda Mama

  5. Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 106, Taiwan

    Chang-Ping Yu

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  1. Fidèle Suanon
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  2. Qiaoqiao Chi
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  3. Xiaoyong Yang
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  4. Hongjie Wang
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  7. Daouda Mama
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  8. Chang-Ping Yu
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  9. Qian Sun
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Correspondence to Qian Sun.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Suanon, F., Chi, Q., Yang, X. et al. Diagnosis and ecotoxicological risk assessment of 49 elements in sludge from wastewater treatment plants of Chongqing and Xiamen cities, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 29006–29016 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2888-z

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