Assessment of potentially harmful elements in floodplain soils and stream sediments in Ile-Ife area, South-western Niger
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Assessment of potentially harmful elements in floodplain soils and stream sediments in Ile‑Ife area, South‑western Nigeria I. T. Asowata1 · A. S. Akinwumiju2 Received: 22 April 2020 / Accepted: 30 July 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The enrichment of potentially harmful elements (PHEs) in stream sediments (SS) and floodplain soils (FS) poses great environmental hazards to water bodies and other parts of the ecosystem. The aim of this research was to evaluate the distribution pattern of selected PHEs (Cu, Pb, Zn, Co, Mn, As, Cd, V, Cr, Ni, Th, Sr and La) in SS of selected rivers that drain Ile-Ife area and their adjacent FS, to ascertain the pollution status of these elements in the study area. Sixty samples (40 SS and 20 FS) were purposely collected for this study; the samples were analysed with ultra-trace inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry method (ICP-MS). The PHEs results showed decreasing trend of average contents of PHEs studied; Mn > Zn > V > Cr > Pb > La > Sr > Cu > Ni > Co > Th > As > Cd for both SS and FS. Also, PHEs concentration in the studied geo media showed a significant level of enrichment as observed from the results. Elemental association showed positive correlation for topsoil, Pb/Zn = R2, 0.85 and negative correlation for topsoil Cr/Zn = R2 0.02 among the other PHEs. Source apportionment showed that the studied metal enrichment is largely anthropogenic rather than geogenic. Geoaccumulation and metal ratio indexes indicated that FS and SS studied have received significant PHEs of between moderately to strongly polluted, which implies significant environmental implications in the study area. Keywords Potentially harmful elements · Ile-Ife · Enrichment · GIS · Aqua regia
1 Introduction Stream sediments and floodplain soils are important part of the ecosystem that may serve as sink for pollutant such as potentially harmful elements (PHEs). According to [5], PHEs are described as group of metals and metalloids that are associated with pollution and toxicity. Of these PHEs, living organisms need some tolerable quantity (amounts), which are referred to as essential metals for body metabolisms and nutrients, [16, 35]. These metals include Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn among others, [5]. In some cases, they can alternately be referred to as trace elements, [5, 15]. In this study, the PHEs that were determined include copper (Cu), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), manganese (Mn), arsenic (As), thorium (Th), strontium (Sr), cadmium (Cd),
vanadium (V), lanthanum (La) and chromium (Cr). These pollutants can reach an enrichment level that may pose serious environmental health risk to man and the biota [32, 45]. Due to expansion of urban settlements, as well as rapid climate changes, there have been increased and frequent flooding, which lead to mobilisation and redistribution of some pollutants in river system and some are deposited along with the sediments flow in the floodplain transfers and storage, causing metal enrichment that may attain pollution status, [13, 18, 19
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