Using Heavy Metals Pollution Indices for Assessment of Tigris River Water Within Al-Tarmiya City, Northern Baghdad, Iraq

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to (1) identify and measure the concentration of five toxic elements in the Tigris water, (2) determine the threat of these metals in water by various pollution indices such as pollution index (PI) as single index, metal index (MI) as integrated index, and potential ecological risk index (PERI) to assess the ecological risk. The results of this study showed that PI values for most elements were at nonaffected levels, except for Pb and Al metals, which were within slight and moderate levels, respectively. Whereas MI values indicate that all sites fall within a threshold of warning level. For the contamination factor, the values mostly lie in the low contamination level, except Al lies within the moderate range, which led to an increase in the contamination degree. For risk assessment, the values of ecological risk factors for all metals at all sites were within a low-risk level, less than 40. Also, the values of the ecological risk index in all sites were at a low-risk level, recorded at 17. 70, 22.92, 22.62, and 21.79 in sites 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. We can conclude that the decrease in the levels of Er led to a decrease in the levels of PERI and vice versa.