Characteristics and health risk assessment of indoor and outdoor PM2.5 in a rural village, in Northeast of China: impact of coal and biomass burning.

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has health effects that may depend on its sources and chemical composition. In this study, characteristics of PM2.5 chemical composition and health risk assessment from Songyuan, China, were investigated during day and night in indoor and outdoor from February 4 to 19, 2021. Relative high concentrations of PM2.5 were obtained in indoor environment than outdoor, with 503.95 ± 209.62 µg/m3 during the day and 357.52 ± 232.81 µg/m3 at night for the indoor environment. Relatively high total carbon, organic carbons, elemental carbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (OPAHs) were obtained in indoor environment. However, the average concentrations of PAHs were higher during night (73.57 ± 43.09 ng/m3) in indoor and OPAHs during day (6.027 ± 2.960 ng/m3) in outdoor. They had different I/O distributions of these compounds during day and night. Indeno(1,2,3-cd) pyrene was the dominant PAHs, and benzanthrone was the dominant OPAHs; this is different with the previous studies. The high indoor/outdoor ratios showed the indoor coal and biomass burning greatly affect the indoor pollutants. Average ILCR health risk assessment for PAHs was all higher than 10-6 for different age gender, suggesting there has potential cancer risk existed for populations living in the rural coal and biomass burning area Songyuan, China.

Classification of health needs: a cluster analysis of older adults in urban areas.

BACKGROUND: In this study, a cross-sectional survey was used to understand and analyze the health status and health needs of the elderly in the community. The cluster analysis method was used to explore the relationship between health needs items and investigate the commonness among health demand items, to provide a reference for the development of health management of the elderly with chronic diseases. METHODS: We used convenience sampling to recruit the participants (aged 60 and above) from four urban community centers in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, China, in this study. This study uses the Medical Outcomes Study(MOS)36-Item Short-Form Health Survey. The self-designed questionnaire includes sociodemographic characteristics, chronic diseases, physical examination conditions, illness in the past two weeks, and a health needs questionnaire. SPSS 18.0 was used for data entry and analysis. Data analysis methods included descriptive statistical analysis, t-test, one-way analysis, cluster analysis, and linear multiple regression analysis. RESULTS: The rate of health needs among the elderly in the community for various health services is 1.3-69.7%, of which the top three are: regular physical examination (69.7%), day Care Center (67.7%), the establishment of a Medical Alert Systems (66.1%). The health needs of the elderly in the community are divided into three categories: basic needs (24 items), health education (13 items), and first aid (2 items). The regression analysis found that the influencing factors of health status were age, revenue and expenditure, medical expenses, health education, basic needs, and first aid. CONCLUSIONS: The community should strengthen the management of chronic diseases of the elderly and the publicity and education of related knowledge, and provide complementary health care services according to the health needs of the elderly, improve the health of the elderly, and improve the quality of life of the elderly.

Acute Kidney Injury after Multiple Cycles of Cisplatin Chemotherapy: A Nomogram for Risk Assessment.

INTRODUCTION: Acute kidney injury (AKI) caused by cisplatin is common and has a higher incidence of multiple use, resulting in a poor short- and long-term prognosis for patients. There is currently no good premedication AKI risk assessment tool. The aim of this study was to establish an AKI risk assessment nomogram for patients with multiple cisplatin applications. METHODS: This study was a retrospective analysis of patients who were treated with non-first-time cisplatin chemotherapy regimen at Changzhou Second People's Hospital affiliated to Nanjing Medical University from January 2016 to January 2022. All data from the development group were used to screen the impact factors of AKI via univariate and multivariate analyses. A nomogram was developed based on these impact factors and verified with verification group. The area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, calibration curves, and decision curve analyses (DCAs) were used to evaluate the nomogram. RESULTS: Among the 256 patients enrolled in 450 cycles of chemotherapy, 282 were in the development cohort (97 AKI), and 168 were in the validation cohort (61 AKI). Multivariate logistic regression revealed that age, hypertension, diabetes, serum cystatin C (sCysC), urinary kidney injury molecule-1 (uKim1), and a single dose of cisplatin were independently associated with AKI. The results showed that our model yielded satisfied diagnostic performance with an AUC value of 0.887 and 0.906 using the development group and on verification group. The calibration plots and DCA showed the superior clinical applicability of the nomogram. These results were verified in the validation cohort. CONCLUSION: A nomogram combining functional (sCysC) and tubular (uKim1) injury biomarkers with conventional clinical factors might assess the risk of AKI after multiple cycles of cisplatin chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy drug potency assessment method of ovarian cancer cells by digital holography microscopy.

Drug potency assessment plays a crucial role in cancer chemotherapy. The selection of appropriate chemotherapy drugs can reduce the impact on the patient's physical condition and achieve a better therapeutic effect. Various methods have been used to achieve in vitro drug susceptibility assays, but there are few studies on calculating morphology and texture parameters quantitatively based on phase imaging for drug potency assessment. In this study, digital holography microscopy was used to get phase imaging of ovarian cancer cells after adding three different drugs, namely, Cisplatin, Adriamycin, and 5-fluorouracil. Based on the reconstructed phase imaging, four parameters of ovarian cancer cells changed with time, such as the average height, projected area, cluster shade, and entropy, were calculated. And the half-inhibitory concentration of cells under the effect of different drugs was calculated according to these four parameters. The half-inhibitory concentration, which can directly reflect the drug potency, is associated with the morphological and texture features extracted from phase images by numerical fitting. So, a new method for calculating the half-inhibitory concentration was proposed. The result shows that the morphological and texture feature parameters can be used to evaluate the sensitivity of ovarian cancer cells to different drugs by fitting the half-inhibitory concentration numerically. And the result provides a new idea for drug potency assessment methods before chemotherapy for ovarian cancer.

Is It Necessary to Launch a School-Based Financial Literacy Curriculum? Evidence From China.

As starting university is a critical independence milestone for many young people, it would also be the best time to provide them with some financial education (FE). Although there have been many initiatives aimed at enhancing individual financial literacy (FL) and/or financial decision-making, meta-analyses have shown that the effectiveness of FE has been mixed. This study examined the driving forces behind the decision by college students to enroll in a targeted financial literacy curriculum (FLC) and the impact of this attendance on their FL. An endogenous switching model (ESM) was employed to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to attend or not attend the FLC and to counteract any unobservable characteristics. It was found that students with higher self-perceived FL did not prefer to attend the FLC; however, for others, FLC attendance was found to significantly boost their FL in areas such as financial knowledge (FK), financial attitude (FA), and financial behavior (FB), especially for the non-attendees under the counterfactual framework. These "non-attendees" were observed to have some characteristics (e.g., prior knowledge) that made them more financially literate regardless of attendance; however, if they had attended the FLC, they would have gained a greater FL than the attendees. As the FL of the attendees would have been much lower if they had not attended, the FLC appeared to be particularly important for the attendees, which strengthened the case for making the FLC a compulsory part of a general college education.

Multiobjective Tuning and Performance Assessment of PID Using Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization.

There have been many studies on the optimal tuning and control performance assessment (CPA) of the PID controller. In the optimal tuning, the trade-off between the setpoint tracking and the disturbance rejection performance is a challenge. Minimum output variance (MOV) is very widely used as a benchmark for CPA of PID, but it is difficult to be observed due to the non-convex optimization problem. In this paper, a new multiobjective function, considering both the OV in the CPA problem and integral of absolute error, is proposed to tune PID for this trade-off. The CPA-related non-convex problem and tuning-related multiobjective problem are solved by teaching-learning-based optimization, which guarantees a tighter lower bound for MOV due to the excellent capability of local optima avoidance and has higher computational efficiency due to the low complexity. The numerical examples of CPA problems show that the algorithm can generate better MOV than existing methods with less calculation time. The relationship between the weight of the multiobjective function and the performance, including setpoint tracking, stochastic and step disturbance rejection, is revealed by simulation results of the tuning method applied to two temperature control systems. The proper adjustment of the weight with a multistage strategy can achieve the trade-off to obtain excellent setpoint tracking performance in the initial stage and satisfying disturbance rejection performance in the steady stage.

Label-Free Assessment of the Drug Resistance of Epithelial Ovarian Cancer Cells in a Microfluidic Holographic Flow Cytometer Boosted through Machine Learning.

About 75% of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) patients suffer from relapsing and develop drug resistance after primary chemotherapy. The commonly used clinical examinations and biological tumor tissue models for chemotherapeutic sensitivity are time-consuming and expensive. Research studies showed that the cell morphology-based method is promising to be a new route for chemotherapeutic sensitivity evaluation. Here, we offer how the drug resistance of EOC cells can be assessed through a label-free and high-throughput microfluidic flow cytometer equipped with a digital holographic microscope reinforced by machine learning. It is the first time that such type of assessment is performed to the best of our knowledge. Several morphologic and texture features at a single-cell level have been extracted from the quantitative phase images. In addition, we compared four common machine learning algorithms, including naive Bayes, decision tree, K-nearest neighbors, support vector machine (SVM), and fully connected network. The result shows that the SVM classifier achieves the optimal performance with an accuracy of 92.2% and an area under the curve of 0.96. This study demonstrates that the proposed method achieves high-accuracy, high-throughput, and label-free assessment of the drug resistance of EOC cells. Furthermore, it reflects strong potentialities to develop data-driven individualized chemotherapy treatments in the future.

The impact of the spatial agglomeration of foreign direct investment on green total factor productivity of Chinese cities.

Based on data of 285 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2017, this paper mainly studies the impact of the spatial agglomeration of Foreign direct investment (FDI) on the green total factor productivity(TFP) of Chinese cities by SDM model. It is measured that China's urban green TFP generally has been developing well from 2003 to 2017, and progress in green technology plays an important role in improving urban green TFP. Both global Moran index and local Moran scatter plots show that FDI and green TFP are characterized by strong spatial agglomeration. This suggests green TFP is closely related to the spatial agglomeration of FDI in a region. The paper finds that FDI plays a positive role in promoting green TFP in high-high and high-low cluster cities, and the technology spillover effect of highly agglomerated FDI is more significant than that of decentralized FDI, thus promoting the upgrading and agglomeration of green TFP in itself and surrounding cities. The positive benefits of low-high and low-low cluster cities are not significant. Therefore, it is necessary to go beyond its policy of administrative regions and give full play to radiation effect of High-high FDI agglomeration cities and promote the green TFP of their surrounding cities.

Coupling and coordinated development of new urbanization and agro-ecological environment in China.

Agricultural ecological environment conservation is a major strategic mission for the sustainable development of China's agriculture and rural areas at present. Therefore, it is of great significance to examine the coupling and coordination relationship between new urbanization and the agro-ecological environment, and, accordingly, to establish China's sustainable agro-economic development model. However, this topic has not been adequately addressed in previous studies. To fill this gap, this study detailed an empirical investigation into the spatio-temporal differentiation of and influencing factors on the coupling and coordinated development of new urbanization and the agricultural ecological environment in China. First, aided by spatial analysis methods, a detailed analysis of the spatio-temporal patterns and dynamics of the coupling and coordinated development of new urbanization and the agro-ecological environment was conducted. The driving factors were quantitatively examined using the random panel Tobit model and the panel data modeling technique. The results indicate that the coupling degree between China's new urbanization and the agro-ecological environment ranges from 0.30 to 0.50, which is in the antagonistic stage. The degree of coupling and coordination is between 0.39 and 0.59, basically on the verge of imbalance and reluctant coordination. Most provinces lag behind in new urbanization. Panel data analysis demonstrates financial support for agriculture, rural economic development, environmental pollution control capabilities, and government capabilities significantly impacting the degree of coupling and coordination between China's new urbanization and the agro-ecological environment. Among them, financial support for agriculture and industrialization has different effects on the degree of coupling and coordination between the eastern and midwestern regions. Based on the findings of this study, a series of policy suggestions for improving China's new urbanization and agro-ecological environment is proposed.

Does Environmental Regulation Affect Export Quality? Theory and Evidence from China.

Most studies focus on the empirical investigation of the relationship between environment and trade, but they lack a systematic theoretical framework. To fill this gap, this study constructs an analytical framework of export competitiveness from the perspective of product quality, and reveals the theoretical mechanism of environmental regulation affecting export quality. We empirically examine the impact of environmental regulation on the export quality of China's manufacturing industry, as well as its possible mechanism. Our findings show that environmental regulation can significantly promote the export quality upgrading of the manufacturing industry and that process and product productivity are two possible channels through which such regulation affects export quality, although their mediating effects are in opposite directions. The mediating effect of product productivity is greater than that of process productivity, indicating that environmental regulation mainly has an innovation offset effect on China's manufacturing industry. For pollution-intensive industries, environmental regulation plays a significant promoting role through the channel of product productivity, but, for clean industries, environmental regulation has an inhibitory effect through the channel of process productivity. These findings provide important enlightenment for the coordinated development of China's ecological civilization and trade power.

'Get a Fish' vs. 'Get a Fishing Skill': Farmers' Preferred Compensation Methods to Control Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution.

Ecological compensation is an important means for controlling agricultural nonpoint source pollution, and compensation methods comprise an essential part of the compensation policy for mitigating this form of pollution. Farmers' choice of compensation methods affects their response to compensation policies as well as the effects of pollution control and ecological compensation efficiency. This study divides ecological compensation methods into two distinct philosophies-the "get a fish" method (GFM) and "get a fishing skill" method (GFSM)-based on policy objectives, to determine farmers' choice between the two methods and the factors influencing this choice. Furthermore, by analyzing survey data of 632 farmers in the Ankang and Hanzhong cities in China and using the multivariate probit model, the study determines farmers' preferred option among four specific compensation modes of GFM and GFSM. The three main results are as follows. (1) The probability of farmers choosing GFM is 82%, while that of choosing GFSM is 51%. Therefore, GFM should receive more attention in compensation policies relating to agricultural nonpoint source pollution control. (2) Of the four compensation modes, the study finds a substitution effect between farmers' choice of capital and technology compensations, capital and project compensations, material and project compensations, while there is a complementary relationship between the choice of material and technology compensations. Therefore, when constructing the compensation policy basket, attention should be given to achieving an organic combination of different compensation methods. (3) Highly educated, young, and male farmers with lower part-time employment, large cultivated land, and a high level of eco-friendly technology adoption and policy understanding are more likely to choose GFSM. Hence, the government should prioritize promoting GFSM for farmers with these characteristics, thereby creating a demonstration effect to encourage transition from GFM to GFSM.

Comprehensive ecological risk assessment for semi-arid basin based on conceptual model of risk response and improved TOPSIS model-a case study of Wei River Basin, China.

Comprehensive ecological risk assessment is of great significance for the restoration of watershed ecosystem health, and the appropriate and effective assessment method is the premise of ecological risk assessment. In this study, the conceptual model of risk response was developed by identification of ecological risk sources, stressors, endpoints and the corresponding response mechanism as well as the improved TOPSIS model based on Canberra distance and the combinatorial weighting method based on AHP and Critic were combined for the assessment. According to the three aspects of agriculture, industrial and urbanization, the occurrence mechanism of comprehensive ecological risk of rivers in semi-arid areas was analyzed. Furthermore, twenty-four indexes were selected to establish the index system and the Wei River Basin was taken as an example to verify the model. The results of comprehensive ecological risk assessment and stressor analysis showed that the deterioration of water quality (enrichment of heavy metals) and the decrease of benthos integrity were the two main risk factors for the increase of comprehensive ecological risk in Wei River Basin. And the regulation of ecological risk for the Wei River Basin is improvement of water quality and biotic integrity.

Industrial policy, energy and environment efficiency: Evidence from Chinese firm-level data.

Based on a unique micro-level dataset of 30,689 mining enterprises from 2008 to 2011, this paper uses the non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) to calculate the unified efficiency index (UEI) and energy-environmental performance index (EEI) for China's mining enterprises. The double bootstrap method is then used to test how tax incentive policies affect the UEI and EEI of China's mining enterprises. The results show that: (1) the UEI and EEI of Chinese mining enterprises first decreased and then increased over the sample period; overall, Chinese mining enterprises had low energy and environmental efficiency, especially the coal mining enterprises, private mining enterprises and mining enterprises in the central and western regions. (2) Tax incentives positively affect the energy and environmental efficiency of mining enterprises, especially the efficiency of coal mining enterprises, non-state-owned mining enterprises and mining enterprises in the central and western regions. Our results remain robust after using the propensity score matching estimator (PSM). (3) There is a positive feedback between tax incentives and energy and environmental efficiency, more efficient mining enterprises receive more government incentives. Further analysis shows that although tax incentives do not reduce the total energy consumption of enterprises, reducing the energy consumption of enterprises can improve their UEI and EEI. In addition, R&D investment, profitability and resource taxes all contribute to improving the UEI and EEI of mining enterprises.

Evaluating the oil production and wastewater treatment efficiency by an extended two-stage network structure model with feedback variables.

Oil is an indispensable and important energy source in modern society, and oil production plays a vital role in economic development. However, there is no denying that oil production has a very bad impact on the environment. To realize the sustainable development of oil production, the environmental problems caused by oil production need to be controlled and managed strictly. Aiming at the practical problems of insufficient recoverable reserves of high quality oil and aggravating environmental pollution, efficient oil production and wastewater treatment become more and more important. Therefore, the whole system is divided into two stages. The stage 1 is oil development, and the stage 2 is wastewater treatment. Considering that the model needs to solve the undesirable output, an extended two-stage Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) network structure model with a feedback variable is established. The efficiency value of each stage can be obtained, and the weakness of each stage can be identified, so that the efficiency value of the whole system is more accurate. And then thirteen oilfields are selected for the numerical analysis to verify the validity and accuracy of the proposed model, the results demonstrate that the overall system is efficient only if the two stages are efficient; the oil production has higher efficiencies than the oilfield wastewater treatment; There is a stronger relationship between the efficiency of oilfield wastewater treatment and the whole system. A comparison with a traditional model demonstrated that the proposed model has a more scientific, stable and practical evaluation methods.

Pollution Assessment and Source Apportionment of Trace Metals in Urban Topsoil of Xi'an City in Northwest China.

Sixty-two topsoil samples were collected within the third ring road of Xi'an City in Northwest China and analyzed by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry for the concentrations of As, Ba, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, V, and Zn. The pollution levels of trace metals were assessed by pollution index (PI) and Nemerow pollution index (NPI). Meanwhile, the sources of trace metals were apportioned by receptor models, including positive matrix factorization (PMF), UNMIX, and principal component analysis-multiple linear regression (PCA-MLR). The average concentrations of the trace metals analyzed in the urban soil exceeded the corresponding soil element background values of Shaanxi Province, especially for Co, which was 2.38 times higher than the corresponding background value. The mean of PI was 2.38 for Co, reflecting a moderate pollution level, and ranged from 1.07 to 1.72 for other trace metals, presenting slight pollution levels. The NPI of trace metals varied between 1.20 and 3.50 with an average of 2.00, indicating that trace metals presented slight pollution in 62.90% of soil samples, moderate pollution in 30.65% of soil samples, and heavy pollution in 6.45% of soil samples, respectively. Three sources of trace metals apportioned by the three receptor models were mixed nature and anthropogenic source, traffic exhaust, and industrial emissions. The contributions of them were 38.58%, 32.72%, and 28.70% from the PMF, 65.36%, 17.76%, and 16.88% through the UNMIX and 49.16%, 38.90%, and 11.94% via the PCA-MLR, respectively. Meanwhile, the study results suggested that the combined usage of multiple receptor models is a good method to apportion the source compositions and contributions of trace metals in urban soil.

In vitro bioaccessibility of potentially toxic metals (PTMs) in Baoji urban soil (NW China) from different functional areas and its implication for health risk assessment.

In order to better understand both the conceptual and operational aspects of bioaccessibility and phytobioavailability of PTMs (Co, Cr, Cu, Li, Mn, Ni, Pb, Zn) in different urban soils, a total of 30 soil samples from agricultural region, entertainment district, education area, traffic area, residential area and industrial area (IA) in Baoji urban city (NW China) were collected and the bioaccessibility and phytobioavailability were measured by multi-in vitro models of PBET, SBET, citric acid leaching and Tessier sequential extraction procedure, respectively. The suitable in vitro measurement of bioaccessibility and phytobioavailability for each PTM was selected and would be reliably applied for health risk assessment. The results indicated that the bioaccessibility and phytobioavailability for each PTM evaluated by in vitro models depended on PTM total concentration and anthropologic activity influence. The health risks associated with bioaccessibility of PTMs exposure showed that the carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks in all areas for children and adults were below the threshold or acceptable risk levels except lead exposure on children in IA, indicating there were more health risks to the children in than that in other functional areas. It was worth that the highest observation of Pb in IA would strongly correlate with lead-acid battery industries, which the emissions would influence on the occurrences of Pb distributing in the other functional areas, which were supported from the analysis results of XPS. Therefore, the continuous monitoring and attention to the health risk of inhabitants in different functional areas should be paid.

River habitat assessment for ecological restoration of Wei River Basin, China.

As an important composition component of river ecosystems, river habitats must undergo quality assessment to potentially provide scientific basis for river ecological restoration. Substrate composition, habitat complexity, bank erosion degree, river meandering degree, human activity intensity, vegetation buffer width, water quality, and water condition were determined as indicators for river habitat assessment. The comprehensive habitat quality index (CHQI) was established for the Wei River Basin. In addition, the indicator values were determined on the basis of a field investigation at 12 national hydrological stations distributed across the Wei, Jing, and Beiluo Rivers. The analytic hierarchy process was used to determine the indicator weights and thus distinguish the relative importance of the assessment indicator system. Results indicated that the average CHQIs for the Wei, Jing, and Beiluo Rivers were 0.417, 0.508, and 0.304, respectively. The river habitat quality for the three rivers was well. As for the whole river basin, the river habitat quality for 25% of the cross section was very well, the other 25% was well, and the 50% remaining was in critical state. The river habitat quality of the Jing River was better than that of the Wei and Beiluo Rivers.

Use of a Survey to Assess the Environmental Exposure and Family Perception to Lead in Children (<6 Years) in Four Valley Cities, Northwestern China.

With the growth of industry, the extensive use of lead, and urban expansion in Northwestern Valley Cities (NVC) China, there is probable reason for presuming an increasing risk of lead exposure. However, little is known about the lead exposure of children less than 6 years old in NVC. As a first investigation, this study uses a survey to systematically determine the influences of various risk factors within the family environment, parents' background, children's behavior, mother's behavior during pregnancy, and parental perception about children's blood lead (CBL). A total of 596 families were recruited from the general population in Urumqi, Lanzhou, Xining and Yan'an. Parents, and their children (<6 years old), were asked about the environment and behaviors which could possibly relate with lead exposure. The results indicated that in the typical NVC of China, children's environment and behavior, parents' education level, and mother's pregnancy behavior, were associated with potential CBL. It was noted that not all parents in NVC China recognized the importance of children's lead exposure. Therefore, children's health care and medical screening campaigns need to be designed to improve family's fundamental knowledge of lead hazards, associated health effects, and prevention in the NVC of China.

Pollution characteristics and health risk assessment of phthalate esters in urban soil in the typical semi-arid city of Xi'an, Northwest China.

A total of 62 urban soil samples were collected in the city of Xi'an in Northwest China, and analyzed for six U.S. Environmental Protection Agency priority phthalate esters (PAEs). Unlike earlier studies on PAEs in agricultural soil as well as urban soil in humid climates, this paper for the first time comprehensively assessed pollution characteristics and health risks of human exposure to PAEs in urban soil in a typical semi-arid climate. The total concentrations of the six PAEs (Σ6PAEs) in the urban soil varied between 193.0 and 19146.4 µg kg-1 with a mean of 1369.3 µg kg-1. The PAEs were dominated by di-n-butyl phthalate and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate. Magnetic susceptibility and soil texture were controlling factors influencing the concentrations of PAEs in the urban soil. The concentrations of benzyl butyl phthalate, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, and Σ6PAEs increased from the first to third ring roads, while the concentrations of di-n-octyl phthalate decreased. Relatively higher levels of PAEs were observed in industrial, traffic, and residential areas. The PAEs in the urban soil originated mainly from the application of plasticizers or additives, use of cosmetics and personal care products, emissions of construction materials and home furnishings, industrial processes, and atmospheric deposition. The concentrations of some PAEs in the urban soil exceeded soil allowable concentrations and environmental risk levels. The non-cancer and carcinogenic risks of human exposure to the PAEs were relatively low.

Multi-Elements in Source Water (Drinking and Surface Water) within Five Cities from the Semi-Arid and Arid Region, NW China: Occurrence, Spatial Distribution and Risk Assessment.

The purpose of this study was to identify the concentration of multi-elements (MEs) in source water (surface and drinking water) and assess their quality for sustainability. A total of 161 water samples including 88 tap drinking waters (DW) and 73 surface waters (SW) were collected from five cities in Xi'an, Yan'an, Xining, Lanzhou, and Urumqi in northwestern China. Eighteen parameters including pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total organic carbon (TOC) total nitrogen (TN), chemical compositions of anions (F-, Cl-, NO3-,HCO3-, SO42-), cations (NH4⁺, K⁺, Na⁺, Ca2+,Mg2+), and metals (lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu)) were analyzed in the first time at the five cities . The results showed that pH values and concentrations of Cl-, SO42-, Na⁺, K⁺, Ca2+, Mg2+ and Cd, Cr, Cu in DW were within the permissible limits of the Chinese Drinking Water Quality Criteria, whereas the concentrations of other ions (F-, NO3-, NH4⁺ and Pb) exceeded their permissible values. In terms of the SW, the concentrations of F-, Cl-, NO3-, SO42- were over the third range threshold i.e., water suitable for fishing and swimming of the Surface Water Quality Standards in China. The spatial distributions of most MEs in source water are similar, and there was no clear variation for all ions and metals. The metals in DW may be caused by water pipes, faucets and their fittings. The noncarcinogenic risk of metals in DW for local children are in decreasing order Cr > Cd > Pb > Cu. The carcinogenic risk from Cr exposure was at the acceptable level according to threshold of USEPA. Although the comprehensive index of potential ecological assessment of Cr, Cd, Pb and Cu in SW ranked at low risk level and was in the order of Huang River in Xining > Peaceful Canal in Urumqi > Yan River in Yan'an > Yellow River in Lanzhou, their adverse effects to ecology and human health at a low concentration in local semi-arid and arid areas should not be ignored in the long run.