Abstract
Groundwater contamination due to municipal landfill sites is a threat to ground water integrity. This current research characterised the heavy metals in leachate from Soluos dumpsite in Lagos, Nigeria and assessed the groundwater quality at different distances from the dumpsite for both dry and wet seasons. The contaminants examined are lead, zinc, copper, nickel, chromium, iron, manganese, magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium and chloride. The results showed that the concentration level of contaminants examined in groundwater samples in all the well investigated fall within the maximum acceptable concentration stipulated by World Health Organisation and National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control except for GW2 for wet season; but it will be higher than the level stipulated by the regulatory bodies in future based on the predicted values, hence there is a need to upgrade the dumpsite to prevent future contamination of groundwater. A predictive model for transport of contaminants through a porous medium used in this work predicted the contaminants concentration in groundwater samples near the dumpsite to a very appreciable level of above 93% confidence level, using finite difference method implemented in Matlab 7.0. This showed that the model parameters used which were obtained by sensitivity analysis of previous work of Jhamnani and Singh are suitable for Soluos dumpsite in Lagos State. Descriptive statistics such as mean, variation, standard deviation, standard error and coefficient of variance were used to describe the basic features of the results of groundwater samples.
Highlights
The consumption of available resources has resulted in municipal solid waste (MSW) from industrial to domestic activities, which affect human health
Table 4.1and 4.2 show the contaminants concentrations in leachate and groundwater samples during dry and wet season respectively, while Table 4.3 shows the guideline on drinking water by World Health Organization and National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control
The contaminants concentration is expected to decrease as the distance from the dumpsite increases but the experimental results of this work deviate from such a pattern
Summary
The consumption of available resources has resulted in municipal solid waste (MSW) from industrial to domestic activities, which affect human health. Improper management of solid waste areas has resulted in serious ecological, environmental and health problems. Such practices contribute to widespread environmental pollution as well as spread of diseases (Bakis and Tuncan, 2010). Threats to the groundwater from the unlined and uncontrolled landfills exist in many parts of the world, in the under-developed and developing countries (Nigeria inclusive) where the hazardous industrial waste is co-disposed with municipal waste and no provision to separate secured hazardous landfills exists (Kumar and Alappat, 2003). The aims and objectives of this work are as follows:
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