Zhan et al. 2023 - Yangshan gold-mine soil metals

Zhan and colleagues measured As, Cd, Hg, and Pb in soil around the Anba-Getiaowan mining area of the Yangshan Gold Belt in Gansu, China. This is source-attribution and soil-pathway evidence: it does not measure mineral water or food, but it documents arsenic loading in mining-area soils and nearby surface water, tied by the authors to arsenic-bearing gold-mineralization and mining-development context.

Key numbers

The study collected 120 soil samples, including 95 horizontal-profile soil samples and 25 vertical-profile soil samples. Horizontal samples were laid out at 100 m spacing; vertical-profile samples were collected in 20 cm increments, with surface samples at 0-20 cm. The paper states that every sample weighed more than 1 kg before drying and sieving, and more than 200 g after passing a 200-mesh sieve.

The abstract and conclusion report that As exceeded the relevant soil-quality threshold, while Cd, Hg, and Pb were above Grade II soil quality or within the non-exceedance categories described by the authors. The abstract reports As exceedance rates of 15% in the Anba area and 84% in the Getiaowan area.

Table 1 reports average element values for the Anba-Getiaowan area compared with Longnan city and national background values. The study-area averages are As 53.32, Cd 0.15, F 658.95, Hg 0.05, Pb 23.74, and Se 0.17. The Longnan comparison values are As 11.34, Cd 0.12, F 606.80, Hg 0.27, Pb 21.81, and Se 0.09. The national comparison values are As 10.02, Cd 1.35, F 492.20, Hg 0.36, Pb 23.53, and Se 0.29. The source note says Cd and Hg use 10^-9 units and the other listed elements use 10^-6; this page does not normalize those units.

The results text states that the soil As Grade III standard value used for comparison was 40 and that the maximum single-pollution index for As was 1635, with a maximum exceedance multiple of 15.35. Table 2 reports individual As concentrations in mg/kg. High Anba-area examples include T21028 at 417.00 mg/kg and T21029 at 654.00 mg/kg in the illegal-mining area. The Getiaowan section reports As 41.20-624 mg/kg, mean 105.38 mg/kg, mean single-pollution index 263.45, maximum single-pollution index 1560, mean exceedance multiple 1.63, maximum exceedance multiple 14.6, and exceedance rate 84%.

Surface-water context in the results text reports As of 406 ug/L in adit outflow and 64.90 ug/L in a nearby branch ditch. The authors compare this against Class V surface-water standard language printed as 50-100 ug/L and state that later mine construction and development should focus on arsenic pollution.

Table 3 reports correlations among the 25 vertical-profile soil samples. As correlated with Se at 0.941, with F at 0.704, and with Pb at 0.692; Cd correlated with F at -0.621. The text reports three vertical-profile mean As values of 14.16 mg/kg, 18.38 mg/kg, and 51.85 mg/kg, with CM03 the highest of the three profiles and above Grade III soil-quality standard.

Methods (brief)

The authors designed soil sampling based on regional geochemistry, ore-deposit, and geological-structure background. Soil samples were air-dried, sieved through 200 mesh, and analyzed after quality-control checks. As, Hg, and Se were measured by hydride-generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry; F was measured by ion-selective electrode; and Pb and Cd were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Data handling used Excel, SPSS 19.0 correlation analysis, and Surfer 2015 mapping; outliers were identified using a 3-standard-deviation rule.

Implications

Certification: No values from this paper should enter food, mineral-water, or finished-product occurrence pools. The concentrations are soil and surface-water source-attribution data from a gold-mining district.

Courses: Useful for explaining mining-area source attribution: the authors link the soil As exceedances to arsenic-bearing minerals associated with gold occurrence, and identify illegal mining, adit construction, cultivated land, and settlement/downstream zones as relevant local contexts.

App: Context only. This paper can support source-pathway and regional-risk explanations, not product-level contamination estimates.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• soil-to-plant-transfer
• source-attribution-environmental-burden-apportionment
• arsenic-total
• cadmium
• mercury-total
• lead

Verification notes

Recovered from skip:not-food-occurrence under the 2026-06-10 inclusion-by-default rule. The prior skip dropped the paper because it had no mineral-water or food table; under the corrected rule it is a3 source-attribution and mining-area soil-pathway evidence.

The Cd-query PDF and tAs-query PDF are byte-identical (8f1a21163e66d8b6cda7e93cb1f6eea802c96880b763fe3537b699755fbe4c34) and represent the same DOI. A later Pb-query worklist row for the same DOI is also covered by this page. Numeric values were checked against the extracted text around the abstract, Section 3, Section 4.1, Tables 1-3, and the conclusion. Arsenic and mercury are treated as total elemental measurements (tAs, tHg) because the analytical methods do not report inorganic arsenic or methylmercury speciation.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.