Abstract: In order to quantify the carcinogenic risk of soil polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) sources, the urban and rural soils in Taiyuan were selected as the research object. The PAHs contamination levels was analyzed and the concentration profiles were established. The positive matrix factor (PMF) model was applied to identify pollution sources of PAHs, and the Monte Carlo simulation was used for health risk assessment. Based on this, the PMF model and health risk assessment model were used to quantify the health risk of PAHs pollution sources. Then, the differences in contribution of various sources to concentrations of soil PAHs and carcinogenic risk were compared. The results showed that: (1) The PAHs contamination in Taiyuan soil was serious. The carcinogenic risk of exposure to soil PAHs almost all exceeded the acceptable risk level (10⁻⁶) for the urban population, while the probability of exceedance for the rural population ranged from 10% to 50%. (2) The PAHs in urban soils were mainly from coal-fired traffic mixed sources (41.5%), coal combustion (26.0%), petroleum sources (16.2%), coke oven emissions (8.2%), and traffic emissions (8.1%), while PAHs in rural soils were primarily from coal combustion (43.3%), biomass combustion (22.3%), traffic emissions (22.7%) and coke oven (11.7%). (3) Coal-fired traffic mixed sources contributed the most to the carcinogenic risk of PAHs in urban areas, accounting for 53.7%. Traffic emissions and coal combustion were the main contributors to the carcinogenic risk of PAHs in rural areas, accounting for 46.3% and 45.6%, respectively. (4) The contribution of different sources to PAHs concentration and carcinogenic risk differed greatly. For urban soil, the contributions of mixed coal-fired traffic sources and traffic emissions sources accounted for 41.5% and 8.1% to the concentration of PAHs, respectively, while the contributions of these sources to the carcinogenic risk were 53.7% and 13.0%, respectively. For rural soil, traffic sources contributed only 22.7% to the concentration of soil, but they contributed 46.3% of the carcinogenic risk. The research results suggest that avoiding traffic emissions sources is important for reducing the carcinogenic risk of PAHs. It is suggested that quantitative source apportionment technique based on health risk should be applied to soil risk control to reduce the health risk more effectively.