Assessment the Leachable Heavy Metals and Ecological Risk in the Surface Sediments inside the Red Sea Ports of Egypt

Abstract

The concentrations and distributions of the leachable heavy metals (Co, Cu, Zn, Ni, Cd, Mn, Pb and Fe) were investigated in the fine sediment fractions (Ø3, Ø4 and Ø5) collected from the Egyptian Red Sea Harbors at Hurghada, Safaga and Qusier. The three fractions were the essential heavy metal carriers and were formed the main constituent of the marine sediments with percentages exceed 50% at the most of studied stations. The accumulation sequence of the metal carriers at Hurghada was Ø5 >Ø4> Ø3, however at Safaga and Qusier, it was Ø5 >Ø3> Ø4. Fe and Mn showed the highest values at Safaga (7483 and 306.3 µg/g, respectively) due to the high terrigenous inputs from the different shipment operations and the wastewater effluents. The highest values of Zn, Cu, Ni and Pb were recorded in the marine area off Hurghada ports (330.38, 298.40, 91.4 and 101.02 µg/g, respectively), which attributed to the coastal based activities at Hurghada shipyard and fishing berth. Meanwhile the highest levels of Co and Cd were observed at the old port of Qusier (5.85 and 4.19 µg/g, respectively). The correlation coefficient and principal component analysis (PCA) indicated the anthropogenic sources of Cu, Zn and Pb in front of Hurghada ports. Based on the SQGs, the concentrations of Co, Fe, Mn, Zn and Pb were below the lowest effect level (LEL) with limited severity for Cd, Cu and Ni at Hurghada shipyard but lower than the sever effect level (SEL). The principal component analysis (PCA) showed correlations between Fe, Mn and partially Cd as well as the strong positive correlations for Cu with Zn and Pb suggesting common source of contamination that is likely originated from the terrestrial materials associated with the shipping of ores and coastal activities. According to the Enrichment factor (EF) and the geo-accumulation factor (Igeo), Cu and Pb were the highest enriched elements due to anthropogenic contamination; consequently the studied ports were classified as moderately to highly contaminated by Cu and Pb at Hurghada.

Geo-accumulation Index, Enrichment Factor and Quantification of Contamination of Heavy Metals in Soil Receiving Cassava Mill Effluents in A Rural Community in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria

“…According to Guan et al (2014), geo-accumulation index is suitable for assessing heavy metals in soil contaminated by industrial activities. Geo-accumulation index by Muller (1969) and have been applied by El-Metwally et al (2017), Bhutiani et al (2017), Ghaleno et al (2015), Todorova et al (2016), Tang et al (2014) Wang et al (2016, Hassaan et al (2016), Vowotor et al (2014), Ghazaryan et al (2015), Guan et al (2014), Gasiorek et al (2017), Kowalska et al (2016).…”

“…Enrichment factor (EF) is an index used to assess the level of contamination of heavy metals from both natural Molecular Soil Biology 2017, Vol.8, No.2, 7-20 http://msb.biopublisher.ca 10 and anthropogenic sources above uncontaminated background levels (Chen et al, 2007;Amin et al, 2009;Kowalska et al, 2016;Bhutiani et al, 2017;El-Metwally et al, 2017). Fe is the acceptable normalization element (Deely and Fergusson 1994;Elias and Gbadegesin, 2011;Elias et al, 2014;Kowalska et al, 2016;Bhutiani et al, 2017;Mazurek et al, 2017), hence it was used for the calculation of EF.…”

Assessment of Pollution Load Indices of Heavy Metals in Cassava Mill Effluents Contaminated Soil: a Case Study of Small-scale Processors in a Rural Community in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

“…Metal pollution index (MPI) is a simple approach used to describe the integrated effect of heavy metals contamination (El-Metwally et al, 2017). MPI was calculated based on the method previously described by El-Metwally et al (2017), AMA (1992) and have been applied by Usero et al (1996), Sarala and Sabitha (2012).…”

“…Several pollution indices are available in literature for the assessment of environmental quality (Hakanson et al, 1980;Tomlinson et al, 1980;Liu et al, 2004;Cheng et al, 2007;Qingjie et al, 2008;Yang et al 2011Yang et al , 2013Sarala and Sabitha, 2012;Guan et al, 2014;El-Metwally et al, 2017;Gasiorek et al, 2017) with regard to some environmental components (soil, water and sediment). According to Sarala and Sabitha (2012), the use of varying algorithms could lead to discrepancy on pollution evaluation in an environment (such as sediment and soil).…”

Effects of Environmental Factors on Seed Germination of <i>Salix linearistipularis</i>

“…The ecological importance of heavy metals in soil has attracted attention because of its close relation to human health especially in rural areas. One of the major parameters studied is the geochemical distributions of the environment (Jiang et al, 2014;Sofianska and Michailidis, 2016) including ground water (Bhutiani et al, 2017) and sediments (Hakanson, 1980;Zhu et al, 2012;Fiori et al, 2013;Ghaleno et al, 2015;Soliman et al, 2015;Todorova et al, 2016;El-Metwally et al, 2017) and soil (Yang et al, 2011;Al-Anbari et al, 2015). Therefore, risk assessment of heavy metals in the environment provides theory support for risk management (Zhu et al, 2012).…”