Quantitative Assessment of Soil Heavy Metals Pollution

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Soil Science, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran

Abstract

Abstract
Heavy metal (HM) contamination and accumulation in soil and water is a serious problem throghout the world due to the toxicity, abundant sources, non-biodegradable nature, and accumulative behavior of HMs in environment. A comprehensive understanding of the HM pollution in soil is essential in order to make informed decisions on the approaches to reduce contamination, minimize human exposure, and protect populations from the risk. Pollution indices widely considered as useful tools for evaluation of the degree of contamination. In this paper, geo-accumlation Index (Igeo), enrichment factor (EF); single pollution index (PI), contamination factor (Cf), eological risk factor (Eri), sum of pollution index (PIsum), Nemerow pollution index (PINemerow), pollution load index (PLI), vector modulus of pollution index (PIVector), background enrichment factor (PIN), multi-element contamination (MEC), contamination security index (CSI), the probability of toxicity (MERMQ), degree of contamination (Cdeg), modified degree of contamination (mCd), potential ecological risk (RI), exposure factor (ExF) were suggested to address the degree of HM pollution in soil. Finally, a method was proposed for non-dimensionalisation of the above-mentioned indices as well as for calculation of an integrated soil contamination index derived from the sum of the weighted-average scores of all individual indicators. Using these indicators is useful in quantitative evaluation and digital mapping of soil pollution for management purposes.

Keywords


References
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