Abstract
Ghana hosts a significant amount of minerals, and there has been an astronomic increase in mining activities in the country. This study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of shea nut shell in reclaiming and improving contaminated soils from an illegal mine site using a potted design. Besides descriptive and multivariate statistics, geostatistical approaches and pollution indices, degradation and nutrient enhancement, degradation rate and half-life assessments were done to measure the potency of shea nut shell in remediating contaminated soils. The levels of HMs (Pb, As, Hg, Cu and Zn) were largely above-recommended standards with respective means of 167.13 ± 87.49, 12.53 ± 5.95, 2.14 ± 1.40, 70.13 ± 15.29, and 82.6 ± 10.0 (mg/kg). Heavy metals and nutrient distributions varied widely resulting from the indiscriminate removal of fertile soils and the unregulated application of chemicals via mining activities. Though the pollution assessment showed that pollution indices are scale-invariant, Hg, Pb, As and Cu were found to be major pollutants in the area. An RCCI computation of the mine area showed that 36% and 49% of the soil samples were moderately and highly polluted whereas 15% fell within the highest RCCI scale. After remediation, the soil samples ranged from medium (18%), moderate (31%) and low (8%) pollution. The degradation assessment showed that on average, 59.28%, 55.31%, and 71.03% of the initial concentrations of Pb, As and Hg were respectively removed after remediation. Similarly, Zn, Mn, Cu, Sr and V were reduced by 46.90%, 42.91%, 44.0%, 40.33% and 26.44%. The degradation efficiency of the composting process showed that Hg (71.03%) was the most reduced whereas V (26.44%) was the least removed. The order of elemental removal is presented as Hg > Pb > As > Zn > Cu > Mn > Sr > V. The use of shea nut shell as an amendment material could serve as a potent and applicable technique in the reclamation of contaminated sites.
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