Potentially harmful metals and metalloids in urban street dusts of Urumqi City: Comparison with Taipei City

• Concentrations of metals and metalloids in street dusts of Urumqi were measured.
• Mean concentrations of Cr, Pb, Hg, Ni, Cd, Zn, Cu, Sr, As and Sb are high.
• Potentially harmful metals and metalloids in street dust have adverse health effects.
• Children in Urumqi has non-carcinogenic effects from As, Sb, and Cr.
• Patterns of metallic and metalloidic pollutants for Urumqi and Taipei are similar.

Urumqi City is the farthest metropolis from an ocean in the world. This communication measured the concentrations of eight potentially harmful metals Cr, Pb, Hg, Ni, Cd, Zn, Cu, and Sr and metalloids As and Sb in the street dusts collected from Urumqi City and compared them with those noted in Taipei City. Although the geological environments of Taipei and Urumqi differ markedly; however, the potential harmful metals and metalloids studied are surprisingly similar in their distributions in these two cities. Particularly, As is a common pollutant that poses severe health risks to residents in both cities. Hence, the anthropogenic rather than geogenic factors pre-dominate the formation and distributions of street dusts. This finding suggests common control strategy may be applicable to different metropolis on the confinement of adverse health effects by the street dusts.