Characterization And Risk Assessment Of Polychioronated Biphenyls And Heavy Metals In Soils Form An Abandoned E-Waste Recycling Area In Taizhou, China

Environmental pollution and ecological risk caused by e-waste recycling has attracted a great concern. As an emerging world center of the e-waste dismantling, China faced with seriously contamination problems and potential ecological risk caused by organic compounds and heavy metals from e-waste recycling place. In this study, we sampled an abandon e-waste recycling area, the nearby area and a workshop in Taizhou to investigate the level of PCBs and heavy metals in soil. Soils collected in Huajiachi were taken as a control sample.Further, a comprehensive ecological risk assessment was taken by acute toxicity to earthworm (Eisenia andrei), Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines exposure to soil leachates.. The data presented here will be valuable for pollution control and policy making to control the pollution from the abandoned e-waste recycling area. The main conclusions in this paper are as follows: (1) The total content of PCBs in soil samples of abandoned e-waste recycling area in Taizhou are ranged from191.82to35924.37ng/g dry weight with the average of30628.19ng/g. PCB28accounted for23.31%of the total PCBs content, making it as the major pollutants congeners. The Tri-PCBs and Penta-PCB are the most important components in the soil of that area.(2) All samples in the abandoned area were heavily contaminated by eavy metals, which exceed the standard value setting by China. Cd> Hg and Cu are the most prevalent contaminant metals. The sampling site is contaminated by heavy metals and92%of the area was heavilycontaminated.Nemerow multi-factor pollution index was reached to105.27in the abandoned e-waste region indicating the severe pollution status. This value was also exceeding1in other two regions.(3) Acute toxicity in vivo showed that soil leachates of the three samplingarea have significant toxicity to invertebrates such as earthworm, especially in abandoned e-waste region. Study on cell viability(in vitro) showed that soil extracting solution have seriously cytotoxicity to CHO cells.