You have no items in your shopping cart.
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the monthly variation of physico-chemical parameters of sediment and heavy metals across four sampling stations of Ikpoba River, Benin City, Nigeria, from November (2016) to February (2017). A total of twenty-eight parameters were analysed across the four sampling stations. The heavy metal concentrations in sediment samples were determined by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry. Heavy Metal Assessment and Ecological Risk Assessment were used to determine the pollution and risk degree of the heavy metals in sediments. All the parameters analysed using one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were significantly different (P< 0.05) from each other except for magnesium, sulphate, iron, manganese, zinc, chromium and lead which showed no significant difference across the study stations. Heavy metal assessment revealed that chromium, copper, cadmium and lead showed a strong to very strong level of pollution across the study stations. Ecological risk assessment to determine the potential ecological index (EiR) and comprehensive potential ecological risk index (RI) revealed that cadmium had very strong to an extremely strong degree of pollution across the study stations resulting in the extremely strong degree of risk in stations 1, 3 and 4 of the Ikpoba river. The results suggest that the studied stations in Ikpoba River are highly polluted, hence we recommend the need for governments and environmental agencies to take the issue of sediments degradation in Ikpoba River into serious consideration as it may pose a serious threat to the sediment communities and the surrounding environs.
