Assessment of heavy metals exposure,noise and thermal safety in the ambiance of a vacuum metallurgy separation system for recycling heavy metals from crushed e-wastes

Vacuum metallurgy separation (VMS) is a technically feasible method to recover Pb, Cd and other heavy metals from crushed e-wastes. To further determine the environmental impacts and safety of this method, heavy metals exposure, noise and thermal safety in the ambiance of a vacuum metallurgy separation system are evaluated in this article. The mass concentrations of total suspended particulate (TSP) and PM₁₀ are 0.1503 and 0.0973 mg m⁻³ near the facilities. The concentrations of Pb, Cd and Sn in TSP samples are 0.0104, 0.1283 and 0.0961 μg m⁻³, respectively. Health risk assessments show that the hazard index of Pb is 3.25 × 10⁻¹ and that of Cd is 1.09 × 10⁻¹. Carcinogenic risk of Cd through inhalation is 1.08 × 10⁻⁵. The values of the hazard index and risk indicate that Pb and Cd will not cause non-cancerous effects or carcinogenic risk on workers. The noise sources are mainly the mechanical vacuum pump and the water cooling pump. Both of them have the noise levels below 80 dB (A). The thermal safety assessment shows that the temperatures of the vacuum metallurgy separation system surface are all below 303 K after adopting the circulated water cooling and heat insulation measures. This study provides the environmental information of the vacuum metallurgy separation system, which is of assistance to promote the industrialisation of vacuum metallurgy separation for recovering heavy metals from e-wastes.