Combining geochemical and chemometric tools to assess the environmental impact of potentially toxic elements in surface sediment samples from an urban river

This article investigates sediments collected from the banks of the Subaé River located in Todos os Santos Bay in the state of Bahia, Brazil, in 2018, twenty-five years after the closing of a former lead alloy processing plant. Ten sediment samples were collected at different points of the course of the river and its estuarine region. Chemometric tools were used to determine geochemical correlations between the organic matter content and concentration of sulfides and potentially toxic metals. The inorganic geochemical variables (enrichment factor [EF]) used in this evaluation were concentrations of the Pb, Cd, Cu, Zn, and Ni. Chemical element analyses were performed using ICP-OES. To assess the interaction between metals and sulfide or metals and organic matter, concentrations of Pb, Cd, Cu, Zn, Ni, sulfide, and the silt-clay fraction constituted the organic geochemical parameters selected to characterize the amount of organic matter present in Subaé River sediment samples, determining the carbon content (%TOC) to compose the matrix of the principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis. PCA showed that 88.3% of the samples were representative for assessing correlations between geochemical variables. A tendency toward binding was found among Cu, Cd, Ni, and sulfide, as well as the silt-clay fraction. The concentrations (mg kg−1) of lead, zinc, and copper were higher in both collection campaigns, ranging from 4.72 to 31.34, 12.76 to 54.24, and 5.34 to 31.37, respectively. Pb and Zn were presented in elemental form when assessed as a function of the pH and Eh of the environment. Except for Cd (EF: 0.51 to 5.49), the other elements exhibited little or no potential pollution in the aquatic environment of the Subaé River. •Metals associated with surface sediment were measured in the Paraguaçu River.•Environmental geochemical evaluation of Pb, Cd, Cu, Zn and Ni elements.•Core sediment superficial samples were collected along Paraguaçu River.•Formation of metal sulfides is controlling the dispersal of Cd, Cu, and Ni.