Ning Duan

The Yangtze River ecosystem is one of the most important ecosystems in central China. Due to the substantial increase in China’s economy and the improvement of living conditions in rural areas over the past decade, domestic wastewater discharges in rural areas have increased dramatically, seriously affecting the Yangtze River Basin environment, and becoming one of the main obstacles to achieving global sustainable development goals (SDGs). Rural environmental management is very important for the prevention and control of water pollution in the Yangtze River Basin. In order to address the problem of rural domestic sewage treatment, this paper proposes a domestic sewage collection model applicable to rural areas. An operable village sewage treatment plan was developed for Jiangxia District, Wuhan City, specific for each village, based on a previous village sewage treatment plan in Jiangxia District. The plan is cost-effective and ensures a suitable quality of the treated domestic wastewater that meets the local discharge and reuse standards, thus reducing pollution of the Yangtze River and contributing to the restoration of the Yangtze ecological environment.

In this study, to investigate the contamination characteristics and potential health implications of heavy metals in road dust of the typical county in central China, heavy metals (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, V, Pb, Zn) in typical road dust with large traffic flow, in different functional areas of Yangxin County, were determined. The results of the geo-accumulation index (I_geo) showed that Co, Mn, Ni, and V were not polluted, while other heavy metals caused different degrees of pollution. According to principal component analysis (PCA), there were three main sources of heavy metals. The result of statistical analysis showed that heavy metal pollution in road dust mainly comes from traffic activities, industrial production activities, building pollution, and the natural environment. The carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks of children and adults were within the safe range, and hand–oral contact was the main exposure route of non-carcinogenic risks. The non-carcinogenic risk and carcinogenic effects of heavy metals in urban road dust were acceptable to children and adults. However, we should still pay attention to the impact of heavy metals on the ecological environment and human health.