Abstract
Air pollution is very important issue now-a-days. This has affected the components of environment to a great extent. Organisms like animals, plants and human beings are forced to live in such polluted environments. One of the pollution sources to the environment is vehicular traffic which has toxic effect on the roadside plants. In this study, roadside forages, soil and buffalo blood were studied to estimate the level of heavy metal pollution, iron in particular, in Sargodha from six chosen sites at perimeter of major roads. Collected samples were processed and digested for quantification of iron by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Soil and buffalo samples from the site V showed high concentration of iron, whereas in forage, samples collected from site IV had greatest iron concentration. The bio concentration factor found for forage-soil was highest in the samples collected from site IV. On the other hand, bio-concentration factor for blood-forage and pollution load index was found highest in the samples collected from site V. Correlation for soil-forage and blood-forage was found negatively non-significant. The daily intake of metals for iron was found highest for site IV. The Health risk index was highest for the samples collected from site VI.
Highlights
Biota has been adversely affected by pollution caused by various agents in the environment
The collected forages were Trifolium alexandrinum Triticum aestivum, Pennisetum glaucum and Sorghum bicolor. 120 samples of forages and soil were collected in two seasons while the 60 samples of buffalo blood were collected in winter and summer seasons respectively
Heavy metals in soil depend on the texture of soil as arid and semi-arid soils contain elevated concentrations of iron unlike the boreal regions and humid tropic zones
Summary
Biota has been adversely affected by pollution caused by various agents in the environment. Most concerning factor causing pollution is the heavy traffic on roads [1]. Intensity of the traffic on roads affects the extent of heavy metal pollution. The elevated concentrations of heavy metals released from heavy traffic pose extremely toxic effects on the living organisms like roadside plants [11, 12]. For the management and monitoring of the heavy metals in the environment the technique named phyto-monitoring is gaining much importance. This technique utilizes a number of wild and cultivated plant species. To assess the heavy metal pollution caused by roadside traffic this study was carried out. That the remedies of eliminating heavy metals from the environment could by chalked out which is a very important and concerning issue now-a-days
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