Magnetic properties of street dust in Shanghai, China and its relationship to anthropogenic activities

Guan Wang; Jiao Chen; Weiguo Zhang; Feifan Ren; Yuying Chen; Aidong Fang; Lijuan Ma

doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113214

Magnetic properties of street dust in Shanghai, China and its relationship to anthropogenic activities

Environ Pollut. 2019 Dec;255(Pt 1):113214. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113214. Epub 2019 Sep 9.

Authors

Guan Wang¹, Jiao Chen², Weiguo Zhang³, Feifan Ren⁴, Yuying Chen², Aidong Fang², Lijuan Ma²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environment and Architecture, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China. Electronic address: wangguan@usst.edu.cn.
² Department of Environment and Architecture, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China; Department of Geotechnical Engineering, College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China. Electronic address: feifan_ren@tongji.edu.cn.

PMID: 31541812
DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113214

Abstract

Magnetic properties of urban street dust can be used as a proxy of urban pollution. In this study, magnetic measurements on 160 street dust samples, collected from five different functional areas (industrial, traffic, commercial, residential and clean areas) in sixteen administrative districts in Shanghai, China, were systematically conducted. It is showed that magnetic carriers were predominately coarse-grain ferrimagnetic particles. Meantime, concentration-related magnetic parameters showed significant variations among the functional areas and administrative units. Magnetic susceptibility (χ) decreased in the following order: industrial area (IA) > traffic area (TA) > commercial area (CoA) > residential area (RA) > clean area (ClA). Moreover, combined with the analyses conducted using a scanning electron microscope and an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (SEM-EDX), it is found that spherical magnetic particles originating mainly from anthropogenic sources were abundant in industrial areas. Baoshan district, which is heavily impacted by industrial activities, showed the highest χ value among the administrative units. Additionally, the correlations of street dust χ value with population, value of industrial output and the gross domestic product (GDP) in Shanghai and other cities indicated that χ is positively correlated with the city GDP as well as the population size (PS) to some extent. This study demonstrates that magnetic parameters of street dust can be used as an effective tool for monitoring environmental pollution and industrial activities in urban environments.

Keywords: Gross domestic product; Magnetic properties; Scanning electron microscope; Shanghai city; Spatial distribution; Street dust.

MeSH terms

China
Cities
Dust / analysis*
Environmental Monitoring*
Environmental Pollution / analysis
Environmental Pollution / statistics & numerical data
Industry
Magnetic Phenomena
Magnetics
Metals, Heavy / analysis
Spectrometry, X-Ray Emission

Substances

Dust
Metals, Heavy