LAUSR

The control of soil pollution in China has become an issue, and in this study, a compound contaminated site was selected and focus on the site and its nearby environment, organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) were investigated in both soil (top and deep soil) and air samples. The main pollutants in top soils at site are dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDTs, 0.05–104 mg/kg d.w., avg: 14.5 mg/kg d.w.) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB, 0.02–4.85 mg/kg d.w., avg: 0.72 mg/kg d.w.) which is in accordance with its production history. As for the deep soils, ΣOCPs at site were found concentrated at workshops especially the technical pesticide workshop (5.29–22.1 mg/kg d.w., avg: 9.15 mg/kg d.w.) and the history DDTs’ workshop (4.00–64.8 mg/kg d.w., avg: 20.4 mg/kg d.w). Around site, OCPs were mainly concentrated at layers of −20 cm and the −40 cm and decreased with distance being far away, at 5000 m, the ΣOCPs was comparable with normal agriculture soil (22.1−91.4 ng/g d.w., avg: 55.4 ng/g d.w.). ΣOCPs in the air samples ranged 64.6–823 ng/m3 (avg: 459 ng/m3) at site and 9.93–176 ng/m3 (avg: 50.8 ng/m3) around site which are all dominated with DDTs and HCHs. Soil–air exchange fugacity was calculated to judge the transportation of the OCPs and the results showed soils at the site and its nearby areas (within 5000 m) are releasing most of the OCPs into air, and accordingly through evaluation, inhalation was found to be the major source for human health risk, which is a great threat to the workers at site and the nearby residents.