Notice of RetractionHealth Risk Assessment of Organic Contaminants in a Typical Wastewater Irrigation Area, Northeastern China

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

Risk assessment of contaminated sites is crucial for quantifying adverse impacts on human health and the environment. The suitability of wastewater reuse for agricultural irrigation has to be considered for the health risk offered by the contamination of water and soil, as well as the food chain transfer. In this work, health risk assessment of multiple organic contaminants through the multiphase and multicomponent model (USEPA) was investigated in the Shenfu irrigation area, the largest one by wastewater irrigation for more than 50 years in Northeastern China. The results show that the combined carcinogenic risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), hazard indexes of volatile phenol and total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) were 3.43E-06, 0.574 and 16.3 respectively. This indicates that much concern should be paid to the potential adverse effects on citizens living in this irrigation area because the hazard index of TPH significantly exceeds the target value. Comparing the different exposure routes for the health risk of PAHs, the main portion is distributed by the ingestion and dermal contact with the soil. The potential non-carcinogenic hazard is significant for TPH through the ingestion of crops and drinking water due to its transportation and bio-accumulation. Therefore, environmental remediation and serious actions of restricting the cultivation of crops on contaminated soils in the irrigation area should be taken to alleviate the health risk of organic contaminants.