Impact Of Rural E-waste Dismantlings On The Transportation Characteristics Of Heavy Metals And Brominated Flame Retardants

The rural e-waste dismantling activities have severely caused the environmental pollution of heavy metal and brominated flame retardants, and the pollution degree of regional environment can be well indicated by dusts and soils which are widely distributed in the surface environment. This study, based on the analytical methods of heavy metals and BFRs of our laboratory, surveyed the concentration and distribution characteristics of ten heavy metals (Cu, Pb, Sn, Sb, Ni, Mn, V, Sr, Cr, Co) and BFRs (PBDEs, DBDPE) in dusts and soils around the rural e-waste dismantling activities, to discuss the influence of this rural dismantling on the surrounding environment.Rural dismantling workshops were obviously the pollution source of heavy metals and BFRs, whose concentration and distribution in dusts and soils were influenced by the scale and type of the dismantling workshop. The pollution level of Cu, Pb, Sn, Sb and Ni was very serious, which all greatly exceeded the soil environment quality standards and background values of soil. Most heavy metals had positive correlations with each other, which were from the e-waste together. Dusts and soils had similar principal components, which were primarily contaminated by Deca-BDE, and BDE209contributed75.3%-95.9%and80.3%-96.9%to Σ12PBDES in dusts and soils, respectively. Penta-BDE was also important pollution source, in which BDE47and BDE99were the principal components. Most PBDEs homologues had significant correlations, indicating the environment was all contaminated by Penta-BDE and Deca-BDE. The new environmental problem that the concentration of DBDPE was very high whose contamination was similar with BDE209should be payed much attention to. Biplot from the principle component analysis indicated BFRs in dusts as a pollution source can pass into soils.The combined pollution of heavy metals and BFRs was obvious in rural e-waste dismantling environment, and their concentration in dusts and soils both had good linear regression relations. The results of cluster analysis indicated that DBDPE as a substitution was more close to BDE209, and Cu, Pb, Sn were released together from e-waste because of their use in electronic products, and the source of Co、Sb、Ni、Sr、Cr、V and PBDEs (except BDE209) was similar, meanwhile tri-hepta BDE maybe come from high octa-deca BDE.