Source Apportionment and Pollution Assessment of Heavy Metals in an Urban Waterbody

Abstract

With increasing contamination of waterbodies, access to clean drinking water has become a challenge. Preventing further contamination and cleaning up of existing contamination are the immediate steps to address this challenge. For this, the sources of contamination and their relative contributions need to be ascertained. The bottom sediments from an urban waterbody named “Conolly Canal” was analyzed for heavy metal contamination. The level of contamination of the waterbody was assessed using Pollution Load Index. A Monte Carlo analysis (MCA) was performed on the heavy metals concentrations measured to apportion the contribution among the identified sources. The results of MCA were used to proportion the concentration of chemicals among the responsible parties based on the concentration of the contaminants in the waterbody. The study presents a robust procedure for source apportionment, which can be adopted in similar situations.