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Escalating arsenic contamination throughout Chinese soils

Nature Sustainability (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

China faces widespread soil arsenic pollution caused by intensified industrial and agricultural activities, the impacts of which, however, have never been evaluated at the national scale. In this study, we developed a machine-learning model built on 3,524 surveys, representing over one million soil samples, to generate annual maps of arsenic concentration in China’s surface soils for the period 2000–2040. The model has uncovered a worrying trend of increasing arsenic concentrations, rising from a mean of 11.9 mg kg−1 in 2000 to 12.6 mg kg−1 in 2020, with an anticipated further increase to 13.6 mg kg−1 by 2040. The primary anthropogenic causes have been identified as non-ferrous mining activities (68.0%), followed by energy consumption (15.8%), smelting (13.2%) and farming practices (3.0%). Furthermore, in 2000, 2020 and 2040, the model predicts that 13.0%, 17.1% and 18.3% of rice production and 10.0%, 13.9% and 15.9% of the population, respectively, would be located on soils with arsenic concentrations over 20 mg kg−1. Despite the establishment of initiatives such as the Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan by the Chinese government to restrain this burgeoning arsenic pollution, our findings underscore the urgent need for more vigorous measures to stall or reverse this disturbing trend.

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Fig. 1: China’s surface soil arsenic concentrations.
Fig. 2: China’s agricultural soil arsenic concentrations.
Fig. 3: Chinese population exposed to soil arsenic.
Fig. 4: Contribution of various sectors to arsenic contamination.
Fig. 5: Arsenic concentration in Chinese rice.

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Data availability

Arsenic concentration data for soil and rice samples are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25477366 (ref. 54). Data for the predictive variables are provided in the Supporting Information.

Code availability

The codes for this study are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25477366 (ref. 54).

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Acknowledgements

We express our deepest appreciation to D. Zhou of Nanjing University, whose insightful comments and invaluable guidance played a pivotal role in the preparation of this paper. We also thank the many providers of data, which were an essential component of this work. We acknowledge the National Earth System Science Data Center, the National Tibetan Plateau Data Center and Geospatial Data Cloud for data support. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 42077140 (Y.Y.) and 41991330 (Y.L.)), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant nos. 2020YFC1807002 (Y.Y.), 2021YFC1809103 (Y.Y.) and 2022YFD1700104 (Y.L.)), Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. Y912010 (Y.Y.)), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant no. BK20231461 (J.Z.)) and the Conservation of Biodiversity in China in the light of Climate Change (CHN-2152, 18/0015, (Q.C.)).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Shuyou Zhang, Jiangjiang Zhang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Shuyou Zhang, Qiang Chen, Qing Zhou, Jun Man, Changlong Wei, Yongming Luo & Yijun Yao

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shuyou Zhang, Qiang Chen, Qing Zhou, Jun Man, Changlong Wei, Yongming Luo & Yijun Yao

  3. College of Environment, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

    Shuyou Zhang & Songhe Zhang

  4. Yangtze Institute for Conservation and Development, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

    Jiangjiang Zhang

  5. Key Laboratory of Pollution Exposure and Health Intervention of Zhejiang Province, Interdisciplinary Research Academy, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, China

    Lili Niu

  6. Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Nanjing, China

    Qiang Chen

  7. Department of Environmental Engineering, College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Nan Xiao

  8. School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, NingboTech University, Ningbo, China

    Jianqing Ma

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Contributions

Y.Y. designed the study. Shuyou Zhang, L.N., Q.Z. and N.X. collected the data. Y.Y., Shuyou Zhang and J.Z. performed the modelling. Y.Y., Shuyou Zhang and J.Z. wrote the first complete draft of the paper. Y.Y., Shuyou Zhang and J.Z. revised the paper with inputs from all co-authors. Y.Y., Shuyou Zhang, J.Z., L.N., Q.C., Q.Z., N.X., J.M., J.M., C.W., Songhe Zhang and Y.L. contributed to the interpretation of results, writing and revision of the paper.

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Correspondence to Yijun Yao.

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Zhang, S., Zhang, J., Niu, L. et al. Escalating arsenic contamination throughout Chinese soils. Nat Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01341-7

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