Heavy‐Metal Concentration of Sewage‐Contaminated Water and Its Impact on Underground Water, Soil, and Crop Plants in Alluvial Soils of Northwestern India

Abstract

Heavy-metal concentration in underground and surface water, soil, and crop plants growing in farmers' fields near the industrial city of Ludhiana, Punjab, India, that receive irrigation with water contaminated with sewer and untreated industrial effluents was studied. The concentrations of lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), and nickel (Ni) in sewage-contaminated water were 18, 80, 88, and 210 times higher than in shallow handpump water, and 21, 133, 700, and 2200 times higher than in deep tube-well water, respectively. The concentrations of Cd and Ni in shallow handpump underground water were significantly higher than in deep tube-well underground water. The concentrations of Pb, Cr, Cd, and Ni in deep tube-well water were 0.017, 0.003, 0.0002, and 0.0002 mg L 21 , respectively. Soils irrigated with sewagecontaminated water had higher electrical conductivity, cation exchange capacity, organic carbon (C), and clay content but had lower pH and calcium carbonate content compared to soils irrigated with deep underground water. The concentrations of diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA) -extractable Pb, Cr, Cd, and Ni in soils irrigated with sewage-contaminated water were 1.8, 35.5, 3.6, and 14.3 times higher, and total concentrations of these heavy metals were 1.5, 3.0, 3.7, and 2.2 times higher than that in soils irrigated with deep underground water. The mean concentrations of Pb, Cr, Cd, and Ni in crop plants growing on soils irrigated with sewage-contaminated water were 4.88, 4.20, 0.29, and 3.99 mg kg 21 , which were 1.2, 2.1, 8.7, and 1.9 times higher than in plants irrigated with deep tube-well water, respectively. The amounts of potentially toxic metals were significantly and positively correlated with cation exchange capacity and organic C content and negatively correlated with soil pH. In conclusion, long-term accumulation of toxic metals in soils and their uptake by crop plants has a high potential for phytotoxicity as well as for entering into the food chain. The findings also suggest contamination of underground shallow drinking water through leaching of some highly mobile metals.

Waste Water Use in Crop Production: A Review

“…Even the same type of effluent discharged by two different industrial units varies largely with respect to their chemical composition [26,40]. Effluents of industries when flushed in the sewage drains passing across the industrial areas further exh ibit elevated levels of chemical constituents [12,23,41]. Effluents fro m sewage drain contain pollutants in far high concentration than those are orig inally discharged by an industrial unit .…”

“…Studies have documented that direct disposal of effluents to land and water bodies has potential to contaminate air, surface, GW as well as soils and crops grown on these soils which will have bearing on human health. Possibilities of GW (shallow tube-well) pollution with respect to heavy-metal concentrations by WW application have also been suspected [12]. Therefore, an attempt has been made to summarize the informat ion available in the published literature to construct a balance sheet of beneficial and harmful effects of WW application in soil-plant-water system for sustainable crop productivity.…”

Long-term Impact of Treated Sewage Water on Some Soil Properties and Nutrients Status in Luxor Governorate, Egypt

“…These two aspects could result in lower pH values in wastewater-irrigated soils. Moreover, Dheri et al (2007) indicated that the production of organic acids due to the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter was a principal cause for the reduced pH in the soil irrigated with waste water.…”

“…Using wastewater in irrigation for 5060-years in soils of Calcutta (India), Friedel et al (2000) found an increase in the soil organic carbon from 0.19 to 0.37% and from 1.24 to 1.73% after 25 years in soils of Kurukshetra (Haryana, India). In addition, longterm wastewater irrigation can be a good means of carbon sequestration in soils and can thus be referred as a soil quality sustaining practice (Dheri et al, 2007). About 1.42% decrease in the surface soil CaCO 3 content was reported with the use of waste water for irrigation purpose over the ground water irrigation (McClean et al, 2003;El-Arby et al, 2006;El-Hady, 2007).…”

Dyeing Properties of Natural Dye Syzygium cuminii on Silk

“…The calibration curves were prepared separately for all the metals by running different concentrations of standard solutions. Samples in quadruplicate and blanks were used as a part of the quality assurance-quality control [23][24][25].…”