Potentially toxic metals record high contamination indices in three small African rivers
- PDF / 1,264,017 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 11 Downloads / 179 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Potentially toxic metals record high contamination indices in three small African rivers O. O. Aliu1 · E. O. Akindele2 · I. F. Adeniyi2 Received: 9 July 2020 / Accepted: 12 September 2020 © Islamic Azad University (IAU) 2020
Abstract Heavy metal pollution is one of the threats to aquatic ecosystems globally and it portends a great danger to the sustenance of aquatic biodiversity in Afro-tropics, in particular. Bottom sediment samples were collected from three small African rivers, namely: Obudu river, Opa river, and Esinmirin river from Sep 2004 to July 2005. The samples were air-dried in the laboratory, digested and subsequently extracted for Ni, Fe, Zn, Cu, Pb, Cr, As, Co, Mn, and Cd using the atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Most of these metals recorded their highest values in the Esinmirin river and the lowest values in the Obudu river. However, the Kruskal–Wallis test revealed that only two metals (i.e., Cu and Pb) showed a significant difference (p Pb > As > Mn > Ni > Fe. Contamination indices of the three metals with highest values also indicate that CF was highest for both Cd and Cu in Esinmirin river followed by the Opa river and Obudu river; while CF for Pb was highest in Opa river followed by Esinmirin river and Obudu
river. Geo-accumulation indices showed the same trend for both Cd and Cu as in CF (i.e., Esinmirin river > Opa river > Obudu river), while Igeo for Pb was highest in Esimirin river followed by Obudu river and Opa river. The enrichment factor of Cd and Cu was highest in the Esinmirin river while that of Pb was highest in the Opa river. Inter-relationships among the metals in the Obudu river indicate that most metals showed highly significant correlations (p
Data Loading...
