Vol.:(0123456789) Environmental Science and Pollution Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33141-z INTEGRATIVE APPROACH TO VARIOUS ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS: EFFECTS AND INTERACTIONS Assessing metal(loid)s‑Induced long‑term spatiotemporal health risks in Coastal Regions, Bay of Bengal: A chemometric study Shammi Aktar 1  · Abu Reza Md. Towfiqul Islam 1,2  · Md Yousuf Mia 1  · Jannatun Nahar Jannat 1  · Md Saiful Islam 3  · Md Abu Bakar Siddique 4  · Md Abdullah Al Masud 5  · Abubakr M. Idris 6,7  · Subodh Chandra Pal 8  · Venkatramanan Senapathi 9 Received: 29 November 2023 / Accepted: 26 March 2024 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024 Abstract Despite sporadic and irregular studies on heavy metal(loid)s health risks in water, fish, and soil in the coastal areas of the Bay of Bengal, no chemometric approaches have been applied to assess the human health risks comprehensively. This review aims to employ chemometric analysis to evaluate the long-term spatiotemporal health risks of metal(loid)s e.g., Fe, Mn, Zn, Cd, As, Cr, Pb, Cu, and Ni in coastal water, fish, and soils from 2003 to 2023. Across coastal parts, studies on metal(loid)s were distributed with 40% in the southeast, 28% in the south-central, and 32% in the southwest regions. The southeastern area exhibited the highest contamination levels, primarily due to elevated Zn content (156.8 to 147.2 mg/L for Mn in water, 15.3 to 13.2 mg/kg for Cu in fish, and 50.6 to 46.4 mg/kg for Ni in soil), except for a few sites in the south-central region. Health risks associated with the ingestion of Fe, As, and Cd (water), Ni, Cr, and Pb (fish), and Cd, Cr, and Pb (soil) were identified, with non-carcinogenic risks existing exclusively through this route. Moreover, As, Cr, and Ni pose cancer risks for adults and children via ingestion in the southeastern region. Overall non-carcinogenic risks emphasized a significantly higher risk for children compared to adults, with six, two-, and six-times higher health risks through ingestion of water, fish, and soils along the southeastern coast. The study offers innovative sustainable management strategies and remediation policies aimed at reducing metal(loid)s contamination in various environmental media along coastal Bangladesh. Keywords Chemometric technique · Heavy metal(loid)s · Human health risks · Data modelling · Coastal Bangladesh Introduction In recent decades, exponential population and wealth growth has led to an increase in metal(loid)s contamination in environmental compartments such as water, fish, soil, and sediment (Ahmed et al. 2021a, b; Rakib et al. 2022a, b; Hoque et al. 2022; Islam et al. 2020, 2023a; Ustaoglu and Islam 2020). Therefore, rivers and oceans are particularly vulnerable to aquatic systems due to urban, industrial, and agricultural wastes. Metal(loid)s introduced to aquatic environments generally accumulate in the bottom sediments of rivers and oceans and play an important role in the overall processes and biomagnification by fish and other aquatic biota (Acharjee et al. 2022; Haq et al. 2022). Like marine waters, terrestrial ecosystems such as soil are also contaminated by hazardous metals, a concern for scientists. Due to their ubiquity, trace toxicity, bioaccumulation, and persistence, elevated trace metals have been observed in soil–plant systems, making soil contamination with metal (loids) a global concern (Sarker et al. 2020a; Nguyen et al. 2020). Soil is a biological buffer and geochemical sink for harmful metals, transporting them to the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biota. Therefore, assessing the toxicity of metal(loid) s in environmental compartments is very important to reduce the toxic effects on the ecosystem. Heavy metal(loid)s such as As, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Cd, Pb, and Cr are the most harmful toxins in the environment worldwide and cause poisoning symptoms in all kinds of living organisms, including humans (Hossain et al. 2020; Responsible Editor: Luke Mosley Extended author information available on the last page of the article