HEAVY METALS OF THE CONTAMINATION OF THE SOIL IN WETLANDS AND FLOODPLAINS

ABSTRACT

Soil contamination by heavy metals represents one of the foremost necessary environmental issues. Heavy metals are regarded as potentially harmful substances released from anthropogenic activity exhibiting risk to the surrounding environment and human health. Wetland soils essential for sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services are particularly vulnerable to heavy metal contamination due to their unique physiochemical properties. In Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, wetlands are facing increasing threats from human activities such as agriculture, mining, industrialization, and indiscriminate disposal of waste. This present study was undertaken in a wetland community of Uteh, Benin City to determine the degree of contamination of this farmland with Cadmium, Copper, Lead, Nickel, Iron, Manganese and Zinc using a Flame Atomic Absorption spectrophotometer. Contamination factor (CF) and degree of contamination (Cdeg) (Brummer et al (1982)) were equally used to determine the contamination status of the soil.All soil samples showed moderate contamination factor with Iron. All samples showed considerable contamination factor to very high contamination with Cadmium (12.08) Pollution Index (PI) (Gu et al (2012)) was equally used to evaluate soil contamination with heavy metals. The Pollution Index was 12.08 which means farmland polluted).