Mercury Pollution And Source Appointment Of Soil Mercuryin Typical Anthropogenic Mercury Emission Areas In China

China is the largest single emitter of atmospheric mercury worldwide.Nonferrous industry,coal consumptions and mercury mine were estimated the dominate anthropogenic mercury emissions in China.Previous studies have focused on atmospheric mercury emissions and trends from these sources,here we provide a study on mercury in the vicinal soil under the impact of these 3 sectors.Spatial analysis,receptor models including PCA/APCS and PMF,mercury isotopes were adopted to revealed the contribution rates of sectors.Then,the applicabilities of these methods in soil mercury source appointment were verified.Mercury pollution in soils of mercury mine is the severest(10.94-13.29mg/kg)compared to other study areas.Elevated Hg concentrations in the vicinal of nonferrous metal smelting plant was detected(0.04-2.88 mg/kg),which means the exposure risks caused by mercury pollution cannot be ignore.The spatial distribution of soil mercury suggested the area ~1.5 km northwest was severely impacted.Concentrations of soil mercury around the coal-fired power plant is a certain extent(0.068-0.248 mg/kg),but does not exceed the national standard,and the most severely impacted area was shown ~1.5 km southwest.The contribution rates analyzed by PCA/APCS,PMF,mercury isotopes of nonferrous are 62.78 %,63.1 %,64.72%,respectively(mean 64.20%±0.78%),which consistently proved that the non-ferrous is the major source of surfacesoil mercury.The contribution rates caused by coal-fired power plant are 17.81 %,19.5 %,26.06 %,respectively(mean 21.1%±3.58%),which consistently proved that the plant is not the major source of soil mercury.The rates caused by mercury mine are 68.51 %,65.8 %,92.15 %,respectively.The largest factor comes from the unroasted ore wasted during the mine exploiting(77.56 %).Spatial analysis can only qualitatively identify the source of soil mercury.Both receptor models and mercury isotopes can quantify the rates of soil mercury in these study areas.However,in mercury mine,receptor models could not distinguish the rate caused by atmospheric mercury deposition.Therefore,mercury isotopes for source appointment is more suitable for mercury mine areas.The sources variety of the receptor models are multivariate,but it needs a mass of data simulation.The Hg isotopes technique is more precise and can receive the rate of each sampling point,but specific source information should be needed before.