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Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables

In the field of environmental health risk assessment and management research, heavy metals in soil are a constant focus, largely because of mining and metallurgical activities, and other manufacturing or producing. However, systematic vulnerability, and combined research of social and physical vulne...

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Autores principales: Yang, Jun, Ma, Silu, Song, Yongwei, Li, Fei, Zhou, Jingcheng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8702039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34948988
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413379
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author Yang, Jun
Ma, Silu
Song, Yongwei
Li, Fei
Zhou, Jingcheng
author_facet Yang, Jun
Ma, Silu
Song, Yongwei
Li, Fei
Zhou, Jingcheng
author_sort Yang, Jun
collection PubMed
description In the field of environmental health risk assessment and management research, heavy metals in soil are a constant focus, largely because of mining and metallurgical activities, and other manufacturing or producing. However, systematic vulnerability, and combined research of social and physical vulnerability of the crowd, have received less attention in the research literature of environmental health risk assessment. For this reason, tentative design modelling for comprehensive environmental health vulnerability, which includes the index of physical and social vulnerability, was conducted here. On the basis of experimental data of heavy-metal pollution in soil and vegetables, and population and societal survey data in Daye, China, the physical, social, and comprehensive environmental health vulnerabilities of the area were analyzed, with each village as an evaluation unit. First, the polluted and reference areas were selected. Random sampling sites were distributed in the farmland of the villages in these two areas, with two sampling sites per village. Then, 204 vegetable samples were directly collected from the farmland from which the soil samples had been collected, composed of seven kinds of vegetables: cowpea, water spinach, amaranth, sweet potato leaves, tomato, eggplant, and pepper. Moreover, 400 questionnaires were given to the local residents in these corresponding villages, and 389 valid responses were obtained. The results indicated that (1) the average physical vulnerability values of the population in the polluted and reference areas were 3.99 and 1.00, respectively; (2) the village of Weiwang (WW) had the highest physical vulnerability of 8.55; (3) vegetable intake is exposure that should be paid more attention, as it contributes more than 90% to physical vulnerability among the exposure pathways; (4) arsenic and cadmium should be the priority pollutants, with average physical vulnerability value contributions of 63.9% and 17.0%, respectively; (5) according to the social vulnerability assessment, the village of Luoqiao (LQ) had the highest social vulnerability (0.77); (6) for comprehensive environmental health vulnerability, five villages near mining activities and two villages far from mine-affected area had high physical and social vulnerability, and are the urgent areas for environmental risk management. In order to promote environmental risk management, it is necessary to prioritize identifying vulnerable populations in the village-scale dimension as an innovative discovery.
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spelling pubmed-87020392021-12-24 Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables Yang, Jun Ma, Silu Song, Yongwei Li, Fei Zhou, Jingcheng Int J Environ Res Public Health Article In the field of environmental health risk assessment and management research, heavy metals in soil are a constant focus, largely because of mining and metallurgical activities, and other manufacturing or producing. However, systematic vulnerability, and combined research of social and physical vulnerability of the crowd, have received less attention in the research literature of environmental health risk assessment. For this reason, tentative design modelling for comprehensive environmental health vulnerability, which includes the index of physical and social vulnerability, was conducted here. On the basis of experimental data of heavy-metal pollution in soil and vegetables, and population and societal survey data in Daye, China, the physical, social, and comprehensive environmental health vulnerabilities of the area were analyzed, with each village as an evaluation unit. First, the polluted and reference areas were selected. Random sampling sites were distributed in the farmland of the villages in these two areas, with two sampling sites per village. Then, 204 vegetable samples were directly collected from the farmland from which the soil samples had been collected, composed of seven kinds of vegetables: cowpea, water spinach, amaranth, sweet potato leaves, tomato, eggplant, and pepper. Moreover, 400 questionnaires were given to the local residents in these corresponding villages, and 389 valid responses were obtained. The results indicated that (1) the average physical vulnerability values of the population in the polluted and reference areas were 3.99 and 1.00, respectively; (2) the village of Weiwang (WW) had the highest physical vulnerability of 8.55; (3) vegetable intake is exposure that should be paid more attention, as it contributes more than 90% to physical vulnerability among the exposure pathways; (4) arsenic and cadmium should be the priority pollutants, with average physical vulnerability value contributions of 63.9% and 17.0%, respectively; (5) according to the social vulnerability assessment, the village of Luoqiao (LQ) had the highest social vulnerability (0.77); (6) for comprehensive environmental health vulnerability, five villages near mining activities and two villages far from mine-affected area had high physical and social vulnerability, and are the urgent areas for environmental risk management. In order to promote environmental risk management, it is necessary to prioritize identifying vulnerable populations in the village-scale dimension as an innovative discovery. MDPI 2021-12-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8702039/ /pubmed/34948988 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413379 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Yang, Jun
Ma, Silu
Song, Yongwei
Li, Fei
Zhou, Jingcheng
Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables
title Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables
title_full Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables
title_fullStr Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables
title_full_unstemmed Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables
title_short Rethinking of Environmental Health Risks: A Systematic Approach of Physical—Social Health Vulnerability Assessment on Heavy-Metal Exposure through Soil and Vegetables
title_sort rethinking of environmental health risks: a systematic approach of physical—social health vulnerability assessment on heavy-metal exposure through soil and vegetables
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8702039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34948988
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413379
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