Substance Flow Analysis of Non-Intentional Lead Use in China from 1980 to 2050

As a heavy metal element abundant in the earth's crust, lead is released into the environment through the use of fossil fuels and minerals, resulting in environmental pollution. This study conducted a substance flow analysis to explore the evolution of China's non-intentional use of lead from 1980 to 2050. Results showed that the main sources of lead inflow from the fossil fuel, metal, and phosphorus systems were coal mining, imported ores, and phosphorus fertilizers, respectively. In 2019, intentional and non-intentional lead use introduced lead flows of 3034 and 616 kt/yr, resulting in 1.1 and 8 kt/yr of lead emissions, respectively. A scenario analysis indicated that lead emissions will be 2, 1.3, and 0.9 kt/yr under the high-resource, baseline, and low-resource consumption scenarios in 2050, respectively. It is necessary to reduce the lead inflow from resource consumption and the risk of lead overflow during the accumulation or recycling of lead-containing waste.