ABSTRACT

Waste is any substance or material which requires to be disposed of as being broken, worn out, contaminated or otherwise spoilt and as such lost its usefulness. Solid waste is the term used to describe non-liquid waste materials arising from domestic, trade, commercial, agricultural, industrial activities. This project was carried out with the aim to identify the various refuse dumps found in University of Benin and University of Benin teaching hospital, categories the various refuse dumps and waste found in the study area, and to carry out heavy metal analysis in various refuse dumps of concentration in University of Benin and University of Benin teaching hospital. They are various types of solid waste which are; the municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, hospital waste etc. The effect of dumping uncontrolled solid waste in both urban and rural areas, when exposed has potential risks from polluted sites, unhealthy food source, air, land and vegetation pollution. Solid waste can be managed through recycling, (reuse, direct recycling and indirect recycling), incineration, sustainability, energy recovery, biological reprocessing composition and landfill etc. heavy metals are naturally occurring elements that have a high weight and a density of at least 5 times greater than water. They have harmful effect on human health and exposure to these metals has been increased by industrial, anthropogenic activities and modern industrialization. Typically reported heavy metals in dumpsites are cadmium (Cr), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), zinc (Zn) etc. The study was conducted in in University of Benin and University of Benin teaching hospital campus, comprising of reconnaissance survey of the overview of solid waste , data used in this study were acquired primarily from open source, there are twenty nine (29) refuse dumps in in University of Benin and five(5) in the University of Benin teaching hospital, with location of refuse dumps and their Geographical positioning system (GPS) where recorded and used to create a map displaying the various refuse dumps in study area. Heavy metal analysis of the following metals (Cr, Cd, Pb, As, Mn, and Zn) where carried out to determine the concentration of metals in soil samples, recorded and used to determine the threshold limits of heavy metals in refuse dumps in study area, using World health organization WHO (1996); Zn, Cd, Mn, Cr, Pb and As represented as: 50, 0.8, 12, 10, 85 and 5Kg/Mg respectively. Federation of European procedures of abrasives FEPA (1991); Zn, Cd, Mn, Cr, Pb and As represented as: NA, <1, 0.05, 0.20, 60 and 0.1Mg/Kg respectively. US Environmental Protection Agency US.EPA (2002); Zn, Cd, Mn, Cr, Pb and As represented as: 300, 0.48, 200, 11, 200 and 100Kg/Mg respectively. European Union EU (2002); Zn, Cd, Mn, Cr, Pb and As represented as: 300, 3, 200, 10, 300, and 5Kg/Mg respectively.