Derivation of Ecological Safety Based Soil Quality Criteria for Lead by Species Sensitivity Distribution.

Due to the increasingly intensive anthropogenic disturbance, soils are susceptible to the pollution by heavy metals, with Pb pollution becoming one of the most severe issues worldwide. It is crucial and beneficial to derive soil environmental criteria for environmental risk assessment and contaminated land management of Pb pollution in soil. In this work, the terrestrial toxicity thresholds including 10% effect concentration (EC₁₀) or no observed effect concentration (NOEC) of Pb were collected from the ecotoxicological database and the published literature. The modeling analysis were performed using species sensitivity distribution (SSD) method according to soil pH. The soil environmental criteria for Pb were derived based on the protection levels of the different land use types. The results showed that soil quality criteria for Pb were 51.1 ~ 153 mg⋅kg^-1, 172 ~ 342 mg⋅kg^-1, 342 ~ 537 mg⋅kg^-1 and 440 ~ 634 mg⋅kg^-1 for natural reserve/agricultural land, park, residential land and industry/commercial land, respectively. This study provides the scientific basis for developing the ecological risk assessment framework and soil environmental standards for Pb in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]