Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 203 (2020) 111055 0147-6513/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) pollution in surface soils in a typical urban region of south India: An application of health risk assessment and distribution pattern Narsimha Adimalla a, b, * , Hui Qian a, b , M.J. Nandan c , Andrew S. Hursthouse d a School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Chang’an University, No. 126 Yanta Road, Xi’an, 710054, China b Key Laboratory of Subsurface Hydrology and Ecological Effects in Arid Region of the Ministry of Education, Chang’an University, No. 126 Yanta Road, Xi’an, 710054, Shaanxi, China c CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, 500 007, Telangana, India d School of Computing Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley PA1 2BE, UK A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Surface soils Potentially toxic elements Pollution characteristics Health risks South India ABSTRACT The pollution level of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in surface soils is detrimental to the ecosystem and human health. In this research, various indices such as an index of geo-accumulation (I geo ), contamination factor (CF), degree of contamination (DC), and principal component analysis (PCA) were implemented to identify and evaluate the soil PTEs pollution; and then human health risk assessment model used to establish the link between heavy metals pollution and human health in the urban region of south India. Results exhibited that the mean concentration of Cr, Cu, Ni and Zn were found to be 1.45–6.03 times greater than the geochemical background values. Cr and Cu were the most profuse PTEs measured in the soils. The pollution indices suggest that soil of the study region is mainly moderate to highly polluted. The non-carcinogenic health risk assessment proposed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) suggested the mean hazard indices (HIs) were below one which denotes no signifcant of non-carcinogenic risks to both children and adults. Furthermore, carcino- genic risk assessment results advised ~80% of cancer risk was caused by Cr contents, while other heavy metals indicate that neither children nor adults in the study region were of carcinogenic risks. 1. Introduction Due to the rapid development of urbanization and continuous growth of the industrial segments, the severe pollution of soils by increasing the concentration of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) which has greatly caused widespread concern in many developing countries, due to PTEs are typically harmful to the environment and also endanger to human health (Adimalla, 2020b; Adimalla et al., 2020; Baltas et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2020). Therefore, in recent years most of the researchers/scientists focus on PTEs pollution in soils, contamination process, and source identifcation by using various geostatistical methods and also its concomitant human health risks in various regions in the world. For example, Baltas et al. (2020) have studied the PTEs (Cr, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, As and Pb) pollution in agricultural soils around Sinop province, Turkey, and found the mean concentrations of PTEs (Cr, Ni, As, and Pb) surpassed their threshold level due to the Sinop region was greatly infuenced by anthropogenic inputs. Additionally, they also evaluated the health risks, their results indicated that the children were effectively infuenced by the non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks of PTEs (Baltas et al., 2020). Jiang et al. (2020) focused on the sources of soil PTEs pollution by using an integrating geostatistical method in the Guangdong region of southeastern China. Their results displayed the mean concentrations of zinc, lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium in soil were exceeded the corresponding background values. Furthermore, they also noticed four possible contamination sources in Guangdong region soils such as industrial activities, agricultural prac- tices, natural source and traffc emissions (Jiang et al., 2020). Cicchella et al. (2020) emphasized on the urban soil contamination in the city of Salerno, Italy, and they observed that the Salerno urban soils were affected by moderate to high contamination and extensively, within highly populated areas, industrial sites and also along the high traffc roads. In addition, they also noticed that most of the heavy metal * Corresponding author. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Chang’an University, No. 126 Yanta Road, Xi’an, 710054, China. E-mail address: adimallanarsimha@gmail.com (N. Adimalla). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoenv https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111055 Received 27 March 2020; Received in revised form 16 July 2020; Accepted 19 July 2020