Abstract
Soil is contaminated with various potentially harmful metals (PTMs). Therefore, the adequate protection of soil from contamination is imperative, as the soil is regarded as the primary cradle for living and environmental balance. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to assess the contamination level by PTMs in Touggourt city, where soil samples have been collected randomly from 18 sites. These sites included manufacturing companies and institutions belonging to the industrial region of Touggourt city. The concentrations of six PTMs - zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), lead (Pb) and manganese (Mn) were assessed using the atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS) instrument as well as the application of the modern pollution indices such as CF (Contamination Factor), PLI (Pollution Load Index) and EF (Enrichment Factor). The highest values of contamination factor (CF) for Zn, Fe, Co, Cu, and Pb were 0.605, 1.605, 0.277, 0.05, 0.438, and 0.01, respectively, and the highest value of pollution load index (PLI) was 0.139, while the results of enrichment factor (EF) for the Zn, Mn, Co, Cu and Pb metals were 2.608, 0.060, 0.740, 0.122, and 2.358, respectively. According to these pollution indices, the results of this study have indicated that human effects or industrial wastes and traffic, in particular, were the sources of heavy metal contaminating the studied region.
Highlights
The massive increase in the volume of pollutants as a result of human activities on the one hand, and the increased level of potentially toxic metals (PTMs) in soil, water, and air, on the other hand, has sparked a worldwide interest in studying these toxic metals (Fang & Lin 2002, Woitke et al 2003, Santos et al 2002, Adamo et al 2005)
For a better assessment of the anthropogenic inputs, computing of some pollution indices represented by the Contamination factor (CF), Pollution Load Index (PLI), and Enrichment factor (EF) is required
It is well known that any industrial activity must leave a mark on the environmental resources surrounding it and the topsoil is surely one of the most affected resources by such industrial activities. This current study has concluded that the study’s soils content of potentially harmful metals (PTMs) exceeds the permissible limit, the contamination factor results fall into the low contamination category, besides the pollution load index results, which need more detailed study
Summary
The massive increase in the volume of pollutants as a result of human activities on the one hand, and the increased level of potentially toxic metals (PTMs) in soil, water, and air, on the other hand, has sparked a worldwide interest in studying these toxic metals (Fang & Lin 2002, Woitke et al 2003, Santos et al 2002, Adamo et al 2005). PTMs pollution has become a worldwide problem because these metals are considered non-organic pollutants with non-degradable nature, so they persist for long times and mostly accumulate in high levels in the environment, which leads to harmful effects (Ayangbenro & Babalola 2017). PTMs are considered one of the most dangerous soil pollutants, which lead to the change in some of the soil physicochemical properties, some of these metals are essentially important for life but in low concentrations, which makes it one of the most serious ecological problems at all (Zheljazkov & Nielsen 1996, Adamo et al 2018). We consider the soil polluted when it contains high concentrations of the PTMs, regardless of the different sources of such metals, as it becomes toxic for humans, plants, and animals (Wuana & Okieimen 2011, Dehghani et al 2017). The background value is the total metal concentration obtained from soil, which is not affected by human activities (Silva et al 2019)
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