Health risk assessment of heavy metals (Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb) in circumjacent soil of a factory for recycling waste electrical and electronic equipment

The aim of the study was to determine the potential environmental contamination in a typical factory for recycling waste electrical and electronic equipment in Shanghai. Heavy metals (Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb) in the soil around the factory have been evaluated in this paper. Compared with the background value, the concentrations of six metals detected in all the samples were higher, which showed that toxic metals were released into soil around the factory. Compared with the Environmental Quality Standards for Soils, China grade III, all the six metals are under soil guidelines. The non-cancer risk in different directions from the factory was in the order of: the north > the west > the south > the east. For inhalation and ingestion, the non-cancer risk in the soil west of the factory was biggest. Nevertheless, the non-cancer risk in the soil north of the factory was the biggest for dermal contact. The trend of cancer risk was the west > the south > the north > the east. The non-cancer risk and the carcinogenic risk for Cr, Ni, and Cd were all below the limiting value. This study might provide a reference for the risk assessment involved in electronic waste management and recycling activities.     

TSP,PM<Subscript>10</Subscript> and health risk assessment for heavy metals (Cr,Ni, Cu,Zn, Cd,Pb) in the ambience of the production line for waste cathode ray tube recycling

Recently, a typical semi-automatic recycling line is proved to be a feasible method for resource recovery of raw material of waste CRTs. However, there are no relevant studies about health risk assessment of the particles and heavy metals diffused from this physical recycling process for CRTs. In this study, TSP, PM₁₀ and heavy metals (Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb) in the ambience of the workshop have been evaluated. The mean concentrations of TSP and PM₁₀ in the workshop were 481.5 and 316.9 μg/m³, respectively. Meanwhile, it can be seen that Zn (8.1 and 7.9 μg/m³, respectively) was the most enriched metal in TSP and PM₁₀, followed by Pb (3.2 and 3.0 μg/m³, respectively). Health risk assessment showed that the total hazard index was 3.29, exceeding the danger threshold. The health risk of different metals was Cr > Cd > Ni. In short, the research results show that mechanical–physical process for e-waste recycling do exist the pollutant mission. So the effective measures should be taken to reduce the harm of pollutants on the workers’ health.