Abstract
Lead and cadmium poisoning is common in some parts of Nigeria as a result of artisanal mining of gold. The poisoning has led to the deaths of hundreds of women and children below the age of five years. In this study, the concentrations of lead and cadmium in eight soil samples collected from selected artisanal gold mining locations in Niger State and battery dismantling site in Ogun State were electrochemically determined. Linear sweep stripping voltammetry technique was used with glassy carbon as working electrode, Ag/AgCl as reference and platinum as auxiliary electrode. The cathodic peak current for the reduction of lead was observed at − 490 mV while that of cadmium was observed at − 675 mV. The concentrations of lead in the soil samples ranged between 19 and 417 mg/kg while that of cadmium was in the range 20–182 mg/kg. The ability of chitosan phosphate to adsorb lead and cadmium in the polluted soil samples was investigated as a step towards carrying out remediation of the polluted environment. Chitosan phosphate was derived from chitosan which was prepared by the deacetylation of chitin obtained from crab. The chitosan phosphate was found to remove the lead and cadmium from all the soil samples studied.
Highlights
Several heavy metals exist in the environment among which mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, and aluminium are known to be of public health concern [1]
The results shown in the present study as well as those reported in the literature [16] show that the soil samples from Maigiro, Kawo in Rafi Local Government Areas (LGAs) are heavily contaminated by Pb and Cd
The study has shown that Pb and Cd levels in contaminated soils in Maigiro, Kawo and Madaka communities in Rafi LGA can be accurately determined by linear sweep stripping voltammetry
Summary
Several heavy metals exist in the environment among which mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, and aluminium are known to be of public health concern [1]. Artisanal gold mining operations have continued unabated in several parts of Northern Nigeria These unsafe mining operations usually lead to heavy metal pollution of water and soil in the affected environment, destruction of the vegetation, land degradation [7]. Several workers have carried out studies on the levels of heavy metals in soil samples from different communities in Zamfara State [9,10,11,12,13,14,15] but few studies have been carried out on soil contamination in mining communities in Niger State [16,17,18] These studies employed the use of atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) which involve pretreatment procedures such as wet digestion, dry ashing and microwave oven dissolution or extraction. The study was extended to a battery dismantling site in Ita-Oshin, Abeokuta North LGA in Ogun State, Nigeria in order to evaluate the soil pollution status
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