Assessment of soil quality along river Ng'ombe impacted by battery recycling factory at Ubungo in Dar-es-Salaam

Abstract

Urban soils and streams contaminated with heavy metals have grown ubiquitous around the world throughout the industrialization age, severely reducing the quality and diversity of life. Industrial waste, such as chemical-releasing factories, is one of the primary anthropogenic sources of heavy metal contamination in soil and water bodies. To analyze the impact of industries to heavy metal contamination, the study assessed the soil quality along the heavy metals polluted river Ng'ombe near the battery recycling plant in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial city. The research looked at three heavy metals (Cu, Pb, and Zn) in a total of eight samples. Soils were found contaminated with both metals i.e., Copper, Lead, and Zinc at 4.68, 4.08 mg/L and, 5.79, respectively. Based on the soil samples taken surrounding the industry, it is possible to establish that the industry contributes significantly to the contamination in the soil and river Ng'ombe stream. Pb contamination was found to be fairly equally distributed across the area (2 to 6 mg/kg), as opposed to Zn (0.8 to 17 mg/kg) and Cu (0.04 to 19 mg/kg), which were shown to vary greatly on soil samples obtained around the area. Different pollution indices including geo-accumulation index, Potential contamination index, Contamination factor, Pollution load index and Modified degree of contamination were also used to investigate the impact of soil contamination, and all of them revealed that industrial discharges were an influence. However; study found the levels to be in permissible limit, but still, it exposes the community to cumulative consequences of metals bioaccumulation.