Contamination Assessment and Source Apportionment of Heavy Metals in Urban Dusts from Hefei City, China

Urban dust samples from fifty-two sampling sites on the impervious land surfaces in Hefei, China were collected and analyzed. The results showed that the mean concentrations of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), chromium (Cr) and cadmium (Cd) in urban dusts from Hefei were up to 67.50, 2332.96, 132.15, 96.88 and 4.53mg/kg, respectively, all of which are much higher than the soil background values of Anhui Province. Based on the analyzed data, Nemerow synthetic pollution index and multiple statistical methods were used for the contamination assessment, source identification and apportionment of anthropogenic heavy metals, respectively. The pollution indexes corresponding to Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr and. Cd were 3.31, 37.63, 4.97, 1.46 and 46.71, respectively. Meanwhile, metals like Cu, Zn, Pb and Cd were attributed to the severely polluted domain as a whole, whereas Cr alone belonged to lightly polluted. The Nemerow synthetic pollution index values. corresponding to different land-use types were in the following order of urban square & park area> commercial area>educational area> industrial area>residential area>traffic area. The contributions of different sources to anthropogenic heavy metals were quantitatively determined by absolute principal component score-multiple linear regression (APCS-MLR): domestic and industrial wastes was responsible for 38.82% of the Cu contamination, automotive vehicle 72.59% of the Zn, building decoration and automotive vehicle 42.07% and 49.33% of the Pb respectively, plating products 73.98% of the Cr and building decoration activities 79.15% of the Cd.