Assessment of Pollution Status in Asha And Saboeregi Mining Areas of Niger State, Nigeria
Assessment of Pollution Status in Asha And Saboeregi Mining Areas of Niger State, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
This research work investigated the water and soil pollution status of Asha and Saboeregi mining areas of Niger State using standard analytical methods.
The physicochemical parameters of water (pH, turbidity, total dissolved solids, electrical conductivity, dis-solved oxygen, chloride, alkalinity, sulphide, colour, suspended solid, total solid, bio-chemical oxygen demand,
chemical oxygen demand, nitrate and phosphate) as well as soil (pH, organic carbon, organic matter, available phosphorus, cation exchange capacity, sand, silt and clay) were determined.
The water, soils and Sorghum bicolor grains were analysed using atomic absorption spectrophotometer to determine the concentrations of Au, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mn, Pb and Zn. Statistical analysis on the results were carried out using One –way analysis of variance (ANOVA).
The results indicated that of the fifteen physical and chemical properties of waters from Rivers Gbako and Tangale studied, seven of the properties (turbidity, alkalinity, sulphide,,
colour, suspended solid, nitrate and phosphate) exceeded the acceptable World Health Organisation (WHO) standard limits for surface waters while four of these properties were within the acceptable WHO standard limits for surface waters during the period of study.
INTRODUCTION
Pollution may be defined as the contamination of earth’s environment with materials that interfere with human health, quality of life or natural functioning of ecosystem.
Such contaminants may be gases causing air pollution, solids/liquids causing water, food and land pollution or sound causing sound pollution. Most of these pollutions except few (such as volcanic eruptions) are caused by human activities.
Pollution has been aggravated by marked increase in global population, poverty, increased industrialisation, and urbanisation in developed countries since the beginning of the 20th century.
Thus environmental pollution is largely associated with the past and present industrial activities which immensely contributed to the release of significant level of metals to the environment (Dolam et al., 2006).
The use of metals in human history has yielded great benefits as well as unexpected harmful consequences. Metals as a group share some common properties.
However, while sharing common properties, metals exhibit wide ranges with respect to one another, in both chemical behaviour and measured values of those common properties.
Historically, it has been the exploitation of these properties of metals and the dependence of the modern technological development that led to the increasing demand for these metals.
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