Assessment of metal contamination using single and integrated pollution indices in soil samples of Nashik District, India
International Journal of Development Research
Assessment of metal contamination using single and integrated pollution indices in soil samples of Nashik District, India
Received 14th June, 2017; Received in revised form 22nd July, 2017; Accepted 23rd August, 2017; Published online 30th September, 2017
Copyright ©2017, Jinal Lodhaya et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Like water and air, soil is essential for growing vegetation and afforestation. Pollution of soil leads to contamination of vegetation and also of the nearby water reservoirs making it unhealthy for the human consumption. Heavy metal contamination of soil has been observed since years due to rapid industrialization, transportation and dumping of garbage at dumping sites. Pollution indices act as a powerful tool for assessing the extent of soil pollution. In this study, soil samples were collected from five different locations of Nashik district. These soil samples were then analyzed for 8 different elements such as Cu, Zn, Cd, Cr, Ni, As, Hg and Pb. To assess the soil quality, 9 pollution indices were evaluated in which 5 were single pollution and 4 were integrated pollution indices.
