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<p>Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) originating from natural processes and human activities pose significant hazards to ecosystems and public health. However, there is very limited&#xa0;information on groundwater PTE contamination in the vicinity of road construction sites. This study incorporated various pollution indices, self-organizing maps (SOM), positive matrix factorization (PMF), and probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) to investigate the occurrence, contamination levels, sources, and potential human health risks of PTEs from groundwater in a highway construction area in Serbia. Most PTE concentrations were within the drinking water guidelines, and groundwater fell within the no pollution to low pollution categories based on the pollution indices. The SOM distinguished three clusters corresponding to different pollution sources. The PMF analysis further validated the SOM findings, indicating that the dominant pollution sources were natural processes, agricultural practices, and traffic/highway construction, accounting for 35.0%, 33.3%, and 31.7%, respectively. The deterministic health risk assessment revealed that non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks were generally below safe thresholds. Non-carcinogenic risk for adults and children was unacceptable in 2.4% and 7.1% of the samples, respectively. The carcinogenic risk for children was acceptable, whereas adults faced carcinogenic risk in 7.1% of the samples. The outcomes of the MCS of risks demonstrated that natural processes were the primary source of non-carcinogenic human health risk, whereas&#xa0;agricultural practices were identified as the principal contributor to carcinogenic risk. These findings provide novel insights and represent the first integrated SOM-PMF-MCS assessment of groundwater PTEs associated with highway construction.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>

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Source-Specific Probabilistic Human Exposure to Potentially Toxic Elements from Private Drinking Water Wells in a Highway Construction Valley

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年10月31日

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  • Jelena Vesković,
  • Antonije Onjia

摘要

Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) originating from natural processes and human activities pose significant hazards to ecosystems and public health. However, there is very limited information on groundwater PTE contamination in the vicinity of road construction sites. This study incorporated various pollution indices, self-organizing maps (SOM), positive matrix factorization (PMF), and probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) to investigate the occurrence, contamination levels, sources, and potential human health risks of PTEs from groundwater in a highway construction area in Serbia. Most PTE concentrations were within the drinking water guidelines, and groundwater fell within the no pollution to low pollution categories based on the pollution indices. The SOM distinguished three clusters corresponding to different pollution sources. The PMF analysis further validated the SOM findings, indicating that the dominant pollution sources were natural processes, agricultural practices, and traffic/highway construction, accounting for 35.0%, 33.3%, and 31.7%, respectively. The deterministic health risk assessment revealed that non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks were generally below safe thresholds. Non-carcinogenic risk for adults and children was unacceptable in 2.4% and 7.1% of the samples, respectively. The carcinogenic risk for children was acceptable, whereas adults faced carcinogenic risk in 7.1% of the samples. The outcomes of the MCS of risks demonstrated that natural processes were the primary source of non-carcinogenic human health risk, whereas agricultural practices were identified as the principal contributor to carcinogenic risk. These findings provide novel insights and represent the first integrated SOM-PMF-MCS assessment of groundwater PTEs associated with highway construction.

Graphical Abstract