Groundwater samples were collected in the Xiangjiang watershed in China from 2002 to 2008 to analyze concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, mercury, manganese, and zinc. Spatial and seasonal trends of metal concentrations were then discussed. Combined with geostatistics, an ingestion risk assessment of metals in groundwater was performed using the dose-response assessment method and the triangulated irregular network (TIN) model. Arsenic concentration in groundwater had a larger variation from year to year, while the variations of other metal concentrations were minor. Meanwhile, As concentrations in groundwater over the period of 2002-2004 were significantly higher than that over the period of 2005-2007, indicating the improvement of groundwater quality within the later year. The hazard index (HI) in 2002 was also significantly higher than that in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Moreover, more than 80% of the study area recorded an HI of more than 1.0 for children, suggesting that some people will experience deleterious health effects from drinking groundwater in the Xiangjiang watershed. Arsenic and manganese were the largest contributors to human health risks (HHRs). This study highlights the value of long-term health risk evaluation and the importance of geographic information system (GIS) technologies in the assessment of watershed-scale human health risk.
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