Risk assessment of human exposure to airborne ultrafine particles and toxic metals: a comprehensive and comparative analysis between urban and rural environments of Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia

Autor: Saeed Rubaiee, S. Thiru, Abdullah Bin Mahfouz, Mohamed Hamdi, Abdullah M. Alharbi
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Arabian Journal of Geosciences. 14
ISSN: 1866-7538
1866-7511
DOI: 10.1007/s12517-021-09092-x
Popis: Exposure to fine and ultrafine particles in the atmosphere has become a major concern for human health and environmental protection in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Due to the interaction effects of dust pollutant types and climate change in physical and human habitats, a deeper assessment of air contamination characteristics of airborne dust in Jeddah City’s urban and rural environment was undertaken under real environmental conditions. Morphology, microstructure, and chemical composition were analyzed extensively using several analytical techniques including SEM, DLS, FTIR, EDS, XRD, and ICP. Results showed that the dust retrieved from the urban site was more acidic with a higher fraction of fine and ultrafine particles which mainly consisted of carbonate, sulfate, oxides, and halite minerals dominated by clay minerals with a mean diameter of 6.5 μm. Moreover, about 70% of the rural dust sizes vary from 20 to 60 μm and were mostly consisted of coarse silt with a higher fraction of quartz. Furthermore, results showed that the metal oxide in urban dust (20.6%) was almost 1.5 times higher than that in rural dust (13.7%). Calculations based on pollution assessment parameters (EF and Igeo) showed more drastic rates of pollution in the urban site than in the rural site, primarily for Ag, As, and Pb metals, EF > 10 and 3 ≤ Igeo ≤ 4, followed by Cd, Zn, and Co. The human health risk assessment indicated that children are more exposed to airborne dust through ingestion. The total cancer risk for Co (1.06 $$\times$$ 10−3), Ni (1.11 $$\times$$ 10−4), and Cr (1.05 $$\times$$ 10−4) were 10.62, 1.11, and 1.05 times higher than the acceptable threshold (1 $$\times$$ 10−4) for children in urban site. This means that children are more vulnerable and more likely to be exposed to heavy metals where their health is severely threatened than that of adults. This study provides interesting details on the high correlation between dust type, source of pollutants, and pollution levels.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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