IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2022i7p4236-d785598.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk Assessment and Potential Analysis of the Agricultural Use of Sewage Sludge in Central Shanxi Province

Author

Listed:
  • Baoling Duan

    (College of Resources and Environment, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Taiyuan 030006, China)

  • Qiang Feng

    (College of Resources and Environment, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Taiyuan 030006, China)

Abstract

The agricultural use of sewage sludge has become an economic disposal method used worldwide. However, heavy metals contained in sewage sludge have become the crucial limiting factors for this way of disposal. This study showed that regulatory limit values are not enough to determine whether sewage sludge is suitable for agricultural use; risk assessment and potential analysis should be applied. Correlation analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) should also be performed to identify heavy metals’ sources and show their influence on sewage sludge utilization. Samples were collected from 13 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) located in central Shanxi Province. Results indicated that the mean contents of heavy metals in sewage sludge were all less than the limit threshold of China. According to the monomial potential ecological risk coefficient (), the agricultural use of sewage sludge had low ecological risks for all heavy metals, except for Hg and Cd. Based on the potential ecological risk index (RI), only three stations had moderate risk, other nine stations all had higher potential risk. The mean potentials by all heavy metals were all beyond 10 years, which is the limit of the maximum application time specified by China. Combining all heavy metals, only one station’s potential was less than 10 years. Although the contents of heavy metals were all within the threshold values, large quantities of sewage sludge are not suitable for agricultural use. Coal-related industries, which were the main sources of Hg and Cd, greatly affected the agricultural use of sewage sludge.

Suggested Citation

  • Baoling Duan & Qiang Feng, 2022. "Risk Assessment and Potential Analysis of the Agricultural Use of Sewage Sludge in Central Shanxi Province," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(7), pages 1-12, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:7:p:4236-:d:785598
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/7/4236/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/7/4236/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kudakwashe K. Shamuyarira & Jabulani R. Gumbo, 2014. "Assessment of Heavy Metals in Municipal Sewage Sludge: A Case Study of Limpopo Province, South Africa," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-11, March.
    2. Baoling Duan & Wuping Zhang & Haixia Zheng & Chunyan Wu & Qiang Zhang & Yushan Bu, 2017. "Disposal Situation of Sewage Sludge from Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) and Assessment of the Ecological Risk of Heavy Metals for Its Land Use in Shanxi, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-12, July.
    3. Baoling Duan & Fenwu Liu & Wuping Zhang & Haixia Zheng & Qiang Zhang & Xiaomei Li & Yushan Bu, 2015. "Evaluation and Source Apportionment of Heavy Metals (HMs) in Sewage Sludge of Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) in Shanxi, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-12, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dorota Olejnik, 2024. "Evaluation of the Heavy Metals Content in Sewage Sludge from Selected Rural and Urban Wastewater Treatment Plants in Poland in Terms of Its Suitability for Agricultural Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-14, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baoling Duan & Wuping Zhang & Haixia Zheng & Chunyan Wu & Qiang Zhang & Yushan Bu, 2017. "Comparison of Health Risk Assessments of Heavy Metals and As in Sewage Sludge from Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) for Adults and Children in the Urban District of Taiyuan, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-14, October.
    2. Lian Chen & Genmei Wang & Shaohua Wu & Zhen Xia & Zhenang Cui & Chunhui Wang & Shenglu Zhou, 2019. "Heavy Metals in Agricultural Soils of the Lihe River Watershed, East China: Spatial Distribution, Ecological Risk, and Pollution Source," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-17, June.
    3. Baoling Duan & Fenwu Liu & Wuping Zhang & Haixia Zheng & Qiang Zhang & Xiaomei Li & Yushan Bu, 2015. "Evaluation and Source Apportionment of Heavy Metals (HMs) in Sewage Sludge of Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) in Shanxi, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Yongpeng Luo & Shenxu Bao & Siyuan Yang & Yimin Zhang & Yang Ping & Chao Lin & Pan Yang, 2021. "Characterization, Spatial Variation and Management Strategy of Sewer Sediments Collected from Combined Sewer System: A Case Study in Longgang District, Shenzhen," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(14), pages 1-17, July.
    5. Yan Li & Hua Yu & Siqian Zheng & Yang Miao & Shi Yin & Peng Li & Ying Bian, 2016. "Direct Quantification of Rare Earth Elements Concentrations in Urine of Workers Manufacturing Cerium, Lanthanum Oxide Ultrafine and Nanoparticles by a Developed and Validated ICP-MS," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-10, March.
    6. Zhenyi Jia & Shenglu Zhou & Quanlong Su & Haomin Yi & Junxiao Wang, 2017. "Comparison Study on the Estimation of the Spatial Distribution of Regional Soil Metal(loid)s Pollution Based on Kriging Interpolation and BP Neural Network," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-14, December.
    7. Yao Yang & Jie Tang & Yucong Duan & Yunke Qu & Feihu Sun & Zhaoyang Li, 2023. "Study on the Relationship between Different Wastewater Treatment Technologies and Effluent Standards in Jilin Liaohe River Basin Based on the Coupled Model of AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-20, January.
    8. Małgorzata Czatzkowska & Izabela Wolak & Monika Harnisz & Ewa Korzeniewska, 2022. "Impact of Anthropogenic Activities on the Dissemination of ARGs in the Environment—A Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-29, October.
    9. Jiabo Chen & Fayun Li & Zhiping Fan & Yanjie Wang, 2016. "Integrated Application of Multivariate Statistical Methods to Source Apportionment of Watercourses in the Liao River Basin, Northeast China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-27, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:7:p:4236-:d:785598. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.