Affiliations: State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and
Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China | China;Environmental Science and Engineering College,
Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
Abstract: The concentration and speciation of six heavy metals in sediments of
eight sampling sites of Haihe River were investigated. The metals, namely Cd,
Cu, Co, Ni, Mn and Pb were considered. By using sequential extraction (SE), the
total metals were divided into five fractions: exchangeable, carbonate bound,
iron/manganese oxide bound, sulfides and organic matter fraction and residual
fraction. A multivariate statistical approach (principal component analysis,
PCA) was used to evaluate the contamination of heavy metals by the total levels
and chemical forms, respectively. The results showed that the total metals
concentration (TMC) could not provide sufficient and accurate information
because the mobility, bioavailability and toxicity of metals depend not only on
their total concentration but also on the physicochemical form in which they
occur.
Keywords: speciation, heavy metal, principal component analysis
