An Assessment on Contamination and Potential Ecological Risk of Cadmium and Arsenic in the Cultivated Soils Around the Ni-Mo Mining Area in Songlin,Zunyi,China

The Ni-Mo mining area in Songlin,Zunyi,Guizhou is a type within the lower Cambrian Ni-Mo mineralization zone in South China.Therefore,assessing the environmental quality of the soils around the mining area is of important scientific and practical significances.The concentrations of cadmium and arsenic in cultivated soils around the Ni-Mo mining area in Songlin were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry(ICP-MS) in this study.The result showed that the soils were characterized by high contents of cadmium(with an average of 1.82 mg·kg-1) and arsenic(with an average of 69.72 mg·kg-1),and that the concentrations of cadmium and arsenic in the soils of the study area were 12.68 times and 4.24 times higher than those of the background soils in Guizhou Province,respectively.In the present study,we evaluated the degree of contamination and potential ecological risk for the soils through geoaccumulation index and potential eco-logical risk index,respectively.It suggested that the soils around the Ni-Mo mining area in Songlin,Zunyi,Guizhou had been contaminated by cadmium(most of the soil samples with moderate to heavy pollution) and arsenic(with moderate pollution dominantly).It also indicated that the studied soils had relatively high potential ecological risk caused by cadmium and arsenic(with moderate to high potential ecological risk levels).Therefore,further researches on remediation for the contaminated soils deserve to be carried out.