Assessment Of Heavy Metal Pollution In Agricultural Soil Around A Gold Mine Area In Yitong County

Heavy metals affect the soil and food adversely, as well as threaten the human health and ecosystem by biologically cumulative effect. Yitong county, an important grain production base with abundance of black soil, has been threatened by a gold mine in fields of the security of food production and environment. For the exploration of the pollution situation, the heavy metal contents in agricultural soil around the gold-mining area have been determined in this work. Firstly, a total of 91 samples were collected by field surveying, and the concentrations of 7 elements (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) in those soil samples were analyzed. After that, geoaccumulation index (Igeo), pollution index (PI) and potential ecological risk (PER) were selected as the evaluation indexes to assess heavy metal pollution. In addition, the varimax normalized rotation was applied to trace the source of pollution. The results indicate that the study area was contaminated on a moderate level.