Anthropogenic metal loads in nearshore sediment along the coast of China mainland interacting with provincial socioeconomics in the period 1980–2020

Metal pollutions have been accused of consequences of the anthropogenic activities but few quantitative delineations between environmental metal loads and socioeconomic development presented. A meta-data analysis study was carried out on metal loads in coastal sediment in the provinces of China mainland reported in literature in the period 1980–2020. Eight metals with well-recognized anthropogenic sources were selected including arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn). Screened with three criteria, a total of 1173 records from 405 published studies were finalized as the metal loads dataset in coastal sediment. Evident provincial patterns were observed among the selected metals but element dependent after transformed to sample number weighted contents (Cw). Against the regional marine backgrounds, anthropogenic increment rate (Ranthrop) of metal loads in nearshore sediment presented better provincial differentiation with the extremes at 7.58 for As and 62.13 for Cu in Guangdong, 91.25 for Hg in Zhejiang, 3.19 for Ni in Tianjin, 7.72 for Pb in Fujian, and 13.51 for Zn in Liaoning. Metal loads in coastal sediment could be explained by characteristic industries in the provinces. Nearshore sediment in Guangdong had high risk to metal loads and other provinces at low-to-medium risk to the lowest thresholds of sediment quality guidelines in China and USA. Canonical correlations identified considerably interactive explanations between integrative hazard quotients (ƩHQ) of the selected metals in nearshore sediment and non-agricultural GDP per capita of non-agricultural population/urban population percentile provincially but few significant fittings by the classic environmental Kuznets Curve model quantitatively. Findings of this study explored uncertainty from both sides in explaining the interactions, i.e., data integrity of metal loads in coastal sediment in literature and appropriation of socioeconomic indicators in relation to metal emission industries.