Heavy metals in urban road dusts from Kolkata and Bengaluru, India: implications for human health

Air pollution and dust pollution are major urban environmental issues, with road dust being a potential source and a pathway for human exposure. The developing megacities of India, where the population may spend a significant portion of their working lives close to the roadside, including consuming street food, have obvious source–pathway–receptor linkages. The aim of this study in Kolkata and Bengaluru, India, was to evaluate the risk to human health from inorganic components of road dust. Samples were collected and analysed from a cross section of urban environments for a wide range of anthropogenic and geogenic elements, some such as antimony showing an increase in response to vehicle activity. Calculated enrichment factors relative to crustal abundance demonstrated significant enrichment in common heavy metals and less commonly reported elements, e.g. molybdenum, antimony, that may be used as contaminant markers. Factor analysis gave multielement signatures associated with geography, vehicle traffic and local industry. The bio-accessibility of road dusts in terms of ingestion was determined using the BARGE method with more than 50% of zinc and lead being available in some cases. A formal human health risk assessment using the US EPA framework showed that lead in Kolkata and chromium in Bengaluru were the elements of most concern amongst chromium, nickel, copper, zinc and lead. However, the only risk combination (hazard index) shown to be significant was lead exposure to children in Kolkata. Ingestion dominated the risk pathways, being significantly greater than dermal and inhalation routes.