Geology

Biography

Biography: Alireza Zarasvandi

Abstract

The Mahshahr city is exposed to a wide variety of pollutants due to the presence of various environmental polluter sources. The aim of present work is the assessment of concentration and source of heavy metals, as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the dust streets of Mahshahr city. In this way, dust street samples were collected from areas with different utility (e.g., industrial, commercial, educational, high traffic, hospitals, residential, and park). After sample preparing, heavy metals concentration like, Sb, Pb, Zn, Cu, Co, Cr, Mn, Ni, Mo, V, Fe and PAHs were measured using ICP-OES and GC-MS analyses respectively. The average values of enrichment factor for Fe, Cu, Zn and Pb is intermediate. Calculation of geoaccumulation index (Igeo) indicate that heavy metals such as Fe, Cu, Zn and Pb in the dust samples belong to contaminated to medium contaminated categories, while other heavy metals (i.e., Co, Sb Cr, Mn, Ni, Mo, and V) belong to uncontaminated class. Statistical analyses such as principal component analyses (PCA) and clustering analyses (CA) was used to assess the natural and/or anthropogenic origin of pollutions. The results of these analyses indicate that heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons mostly originated from anthropogenic sources, owing to the presence of petrochemical industries, and vehicles traffic. PAHs with high molecular weight (HMW) are dominant in all selected dust street samples. Also, it is confirmed that PAHs in dust have a pyrogenic origin. Importantly, the sum of carcinogenic PAHs in all sampling sites is higher than sum of non-carcinogenic PAHs. The ratios of IND/(IND+BghiP) vs. (BaA/(BaA + Chr) proved that biomasses, together with oil and coal combustion could be considered as the source of PAHs in the dust street samples of Mahshahr.