Potential health and ecological risk assessment of selected heavy metals in Dammam coastal sediments, Arabian Gulf

Abstract

This study is one of the innovative attempts to evaluate health risks in the Arabian Gulf region. It aims to assess the quality of coastal sediments in one of the most significant coastal areas between Dammam and Jubail along the Saudi Arabian Gulf coast by assessing the potential environmental and health risks of heavy metals (HMs) in coastal sediments. This was achieved by determining the concentrations of HMs in 26 coastal sediment samples from the study area using ICP-MS. The results of environmental indices, including the contamination index (Cf), soil pollution index (SPI), modified contamination degree (mC_deg), and pollution load index (PLI), indicate that these coastal sediments are generally free from contamination, as the recorded values were below pollution thresholds < 1. Furthermore, the results of health risk assessments using chronic daily intake (CDI), hazard quotient (HQ), hazard index (HI), and cancer risk (CR) indicate that beach sediments currently pose no carcinogenic or non-carcinogenic health risks, with CR values ranging between 10⁻⁵ and 10⁻⁹. However, continuous monitoring is essential to detect future pollution trends and mitigate potential health risks.