Assessing wet season water quality and health risks of Chaobai River: impacts of natural weathering and anthropogenic activities in a small urban watershed

ABSTRACT

Small urban watersheds are susceptible to external influences, facing increased solute inputs during high-flow periods without sufficient dilution. This study determined the sources of major ions in the Chaobai River, which is the essential surface water source of North China. The dominant river water type was HCO₃-Ca·Mg based on the Piper diagram. PCA and ion ratios revealed that natural weathering (evaporate dissolution, carbonate, and silicate weathering by carbonic and sulfuric acid) and anthropogenic activities (urban domestic sewage and industrial effluent) were the dominant factors affecting the chemical composition. Sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), soluble sodium percentage (Na%), and residual sodium carbonate (RSC) assessments indicated potential sodium and moderate salinity hazards. Meanwhile, the non-carcinogenic health risks of riverine solutes evaluated by health risk assessment need to be noticed, particularly for children. The limitation of urban sewage discharge is crucial for improving water quality in urban watershed and needs further studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Small urban watershed
• water chemical characteristics
• water quality assessment
• Chaobai River
• North China

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Jie Zeng from China University of Geosciences for assistance with field sampling, and also gratefully acknowledge Dr. Qian Zhang from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences for laboratory analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Jie Ren: Conceptualization, Methodology, writing-original draft, Writing-review, and editing; Guilin Han: Conceptualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing-review, and editing; Jinke Liu: Sample analysis, writing-review, and editing; Xi Gao: Field sampling and sample analysis.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, G. H., upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the “Deep-time Digital Earth” Science and Technology Leading Talents Team Funds for the Central Universities for the Frontiers Science Center for Deep-time Digital Earth, China University of Geosciences (Beijing) [Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities; No. 2652023001], and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 41661144029].