On heavy metal pollution along Yangtze river stretches of urban areas in major cities

Since the 1970s, Water Environment Monitoring Center of Yangtze Valley has been carrying out the monitoring and research work on deposit materials in the main stream of Yangtze and finished significant monitoring and research work on the deposit materials in river sections of urban districts for 21 main cities, such as Panzhihua, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shanghai etc. Based on the monitoring and research results, this paper describes the basic characteristics of deposit materials, the content, distribution and existing state, transfer and transformation characteristics of heavy metal pollutants. The results demonstrate that the heavy metal content in suspended load is higher than that in deposited material for main stream of the Yangtze, the alongshore water zone has been polluted in different degree. Among the 21 main cities on the Yangtze, the river water pollution along the six cities, i.e. Panzhihua, Yichang, Nanjing, Wuhan, Shanghai, Chongqing, is more serious.