Geochemical baseline determination and contamination of heavy metals in the urban topsoil of Fuxin City, China

Urban topsoil is the most frequent interface between human society and natural environment. The accumulation of heavy metals in the urban topsoil has a direct effect on residents’ life and health. The geochemical baseline of heavy metals is an objective description of the general level of heavy metals in the urban topsoil. Meanwhile, the determination of geochemical baseline is necessary for regional environmental management, especially in coal cities prone to heavy metal pollution. Heavy metal pollution has become an environmental problem in Fuxin City, China for a long time. To establish the geochemical baseline of heavy metals in the topsoil of Fuxin City and to evaluate the ecological risk of the topsoil, we collected 75 topsoil samples (0–20 cm) and analyzed the concentrations of Cu, Ni, Zn, Pb, Cr, Cd, Hg and As through X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, atomic absorption spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. We determined the geochemical baseline of heavy metals in the topsoil of Fuxin City by using iteration removal, box-whisker plot, cumulative frequency curve and reference metal normalization; evaluated the contamination risk and ecological risk of the topsoil by using the baseline factor index, Nemerow index and Hakanson potential ecological risk index; and identified the source category of heavy metals in the topsoil by using a pedigree clustering heatmap. Results showed that the geochemical baseline values were 42.86, 89.34, 92.23, 60.55, 145.21, 0.09, 0.08 and 4.17 mg/kg for Cu, Ni, Zn, Pb, Cr, Cd, Hg and As, respectively. The results of Nemerow index and Hakanson potential ecological risk index indicated that the urban topsoil in the study area was slightly contaminated and suffering low potential ecological risk. The main contaminated areas dominated in the middle part and northeast part of the study area, especially in the western Haizhou Strip Mine. The result of baseline factor index indicated that Hg and Cd were the major pollution elements. Using a pedigree clustering heatmap, we divided the sources of these heavy metals into three types: type I for Ni and Cr, largely represented the enrichment of heavy metals from natural sources; type II for Cu, Pb, Zn, Cd and As, mainly represented the enrichment of heavy metals from anthropogenic sources; and type III for Hg, represented the form of both natural and anthropogenic inputs.