Cancer Risk Assessment and Source Identification of Heavy Metals in a Low Traffic Urban Region

Heavy metals are amongst the most hazardous pollutants which threaten human health due to their accumulative property and lack of decomposition in the body.In order to measure these metals, sampling was implemented on particles smaller than ten microns (PM 10 ) from a station in low-traffic region once a week for two years.Fifteen heavy metals were measured while cancer risk assessment of metals including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel and lead was implemented in three maximum, minimum and average concentration ranges.Results for children and adults living in the region indicated that cancer risk indexes in most of the cases were between 10 -6 and 10 -4 .According to EPA recommendations, in this situation, planning should be conducted to reduce cancer risk.In this study, source identification and apportionment of pollutants were implemented by all measured heavy metals using PMF5 model.It was found that the contribution of lead and zinc industries to emission of carcinogen metals was 42.3% for their waste dump soil, and suspended open soil, industrial activities, traffic and, fuel and combustion were other sources.It was also found that more than 80% of the cadmium is released from suspended open soil.