Baseline assessment of potentially toxic elements in soil from the surface of disposed personal protective equipment in the world longest natural sea beaches

After the COVID-19 pandemic, personal protective equipment (PPE) has become a noteworthy source of plastic pollution and potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in the marine ecosystem. The abundance and densities of PPE and PTEs contamination in soil particles adhere on the surface of disposed PPE in the natural sandy beaches of the Bay of Bengal coast, Bangladesh, were investigated for the first time and PTEs were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). Overall, this study identified a total number of 9124 PPE items from the five natural sea beaches, with a mean density of 2.52 × 10^–2, 2.67 × 10^–2, 4.71 × 10^–2, 4.21 × 10^–2, and 2.52 × 10^–2 PPE m⁻² for the Kotka, Kuakata, Patenga, Cox’s Bazar, and Saint Martin’s Island. On the surface of disposed PPE, the mean concentrations of Cr, Ni, Cu, As, Cd, Pb, Mn, and Zn were 5.41, 6.36, 7.48, 3.01, 2.14, 3.12, 19.33, and 28.85 mg/kg, respectively. Based on the values of geoaccumulation index (Igeo) and pollution load index (PLI), soil was contaminated by trace elements. A relatively higher health risk of trace elements was observed in children than in adult recreators. The self-organized map and principal component analysis revealed that anthropogenic activities mostly contributed to the accumulation of PTEs in soils on the PPE surface. This study explored trace elements pollution in soil adhere on the PPE surface and pointed out the necessity of future study on the geochemical speciation of trace elements in soil on disposed PPE in the sandy beaches of the Bay of Bengal Coast.