Sources, Behavior and Risk of Heavy Metal in the Surface Earth Environment

Dear Colleagues,

Surface earth environmental pollution by heavy metals has been a global issue due to their adverse effects on public health. These inorganic pollutants occur naturally in the environment from geogenic processes such as weathering of parent material, volcanic emissions and from anthropogenic sources such as agriculture and metal industries, improper waste disposal, fertilizers and pesticides, vehicle exhaust as well as coal and fuel combustion. The overlapping effects of human activities and the original environment, as well as the overlapping effects of historical discharge and later re-release, make it more challenging to quantitatively identify the pollution sources of heavy metals in the environment. On the surface environment of the earth, heavy metals could be interacted with mineral particles, organic matters, microbes, organic pollutants, plastics or other emerging pollutants, making their geochemical behavior in the surface environment more complicated and making their risks difficult to predict and assess. In order to prevent and control heavy metal pollution on the surface earth environment, it is important to provide novel insights for source apportionment of heavy metals, the behaviors and risks of heavy metals influenced by environmental factors, microbes and other pollutants.

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) aims to solicit high-quality original research papers, which address the novel methods for source apportionment of heavy metals on the surface earth environment, and the new insight of behaviors and risks of heavy metals influenced by environmental factors, microbes and other pollutants.

New research papers, reviews, case reports, and conference papers are welcome to this issue.

Here are some examples of topics that could be addressed in this Special Issue:

• Source discrimination and apportionment of heavy metal
• Geochemical behavior of heavy metal in environment
• Interaction of heavy metal and minerals in soils
• Interaction of heavy metal and organic matters
• Interaction of heavy metal and microplastics
• Interaction of heavy metal and microbes
• Risk of heavy metal in air, water, and soil.

Prof. Dr. Jinling Liu
Dr. Jun Zhou
Guest Editors

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