Assessment of heavy metal pollution in soil of Jhajjar, Haryana-India

Urmila, Archana Garg and Annu

Abstract

Heavy metal contamination of soil of Jhajjar city of Haryana is studied in the present work. Soil samples were collected from Jhajjar-Gurgaon road. Heavy metals from soil samples were extracted by using acid digestion method and their concentration was determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). Concentration of lead varies from 17.82 mg/Kg to 93.25 mg/Kg; Copper from 17.00 mg /Kg to 74.13 mg/Kg; Zinc from 11.31 mg/kg to 71.93 mg /Kg; Cadmium from 0.28 mg/Kg to 4.08 mg/Kg and Nickel from 14.05 mg/Kg to 52.87 mg/Kg of soil. Some physicochemical properties of soil like pH, conductance, TDS and percentage organic carbon were also determined. Geo-accumulation index (Igeo), Contamination factor (Ci f) and potential ecological risk factor (RI) is studied to assess the quality of soil. These indexes showed that except Cd all other metals included in study were below contamination level. Pearson’s correlation was also applied on physicochemical properties and metals concentration to study interrelationship