Which Pollutants Should Be Prioritized for Control in Multipollutant Complex Contaminated Groundwater of Chemical Industrial Parks?

Increasing chemical pollutants in groundwater within chemical industrial parks pose a critical environmental challenge, necessitating innovative strategies to address contaminants with the highest risks to environmental health and ensure sustainable management. Herein, we investigated 277 chemical pollutants from 367 sampling points across 10 rounds, totaling 1,016,590 measured data points. An environmental health prioritization index (EHPI) was proposed and applied to integrate multiple criteria: occurrence, migration, persistence, bioaccumulation, acute and chronic toxicity, and health effects to rank the target pollutants for priority control. Thirty pollutants were classified as the top-priority group and 81 as high-priority, with metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and haloalkanes ranking highest, while emerging contaminants of concern ranked lower. The top 6 pollutants were beryllium, benzo(g,h,i)perylene, nickel, benzo(a)pyrene, chrysene, and arsenic. The EHPI method was compared against five other weighting schemes, including AHP (analytic hierarchy process), entropy, AHP-entropy, AHP-TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution), and entropy-TOPSIS. EHPI effectively captured and integrated the results from more simplistic prioritization schemes. Overall, 38 pollutants are recommended for inclusion in the priority control list, focusing on the top-priority group and high detection and exceedance categories. This framework provides critical guidance for focused monitoring, assessment, and control of the highest-risk groundwater pollutants, supporting more effective environmental and human health protection.