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Assessment of Concentrations and Ecological Risk of Heavy Metals at Resident and Remediated Soils of Uncontrolled Mining Site at Dareta Village, Zamfara, Nigeria
SULAIMAN, MB; SALAWU, K & BARAMBU, AU
Abstract
This study determined the levels of some heavy metals at resident and remediated soils of
uncontrolled gold mining activities with a view to providing information on the extent of contamination and ecological
risk to the resident area. The soil samples were collected from two site at the resident and one remediated soil, and
analyzed for metals (Cr, Ni, Pb, Fe, Cu, Cd and Mn) using Atomic Absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). The
concentrations of heavy metals (mg/kg) in residents samples ranged from 1.500-13.30 (Cr), 0.0001-0.05 (Ni), 0.18-3.754 (Pb), 0.0003-0.10 (Fe), 0.0005-0.88 (Cu), 0.0009-0.27 (Cd) and 0.0003-0.0035 (Mn) and for the remediated
sample are 12.3000, 0.0001, 1.1989, 0.0002, 0.0006, 0.0003, and 0.0003 for Cr, Ni, Pb, Fe, Cu, Cd and Mn respectively.
The calculated geo-accumulation index (Igeo) shows that the soil samples fall under unpolluted to moderately pollute
for all the studied metals with respect to all studied sites. Pollution Load Index values (PLI>1) were all less than 1 for
each metals in all studied sites, thus indicating perfection. The contamination factor (Cf) and degrees of contamination
(Cd) of the soil samples were very slightly contaminated to slightly contaminated with Cr and Cd; The ecological risk
results revealed that site A, B and Remediated samples were fall under low ecological risk index with values of 0.28,
10.28 and 0.33 respectively. The contaminations of these studied metals may not add ecological risk to the local
environment.
Keywords
Assessment; Ecological risk Heavy Metals; Uncontrolled Mining
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