Abstract
Metal pollution load in soil environment has been enhanced during last few decades due to increasing industrialization and wide application of metals in all sectors. Due to the persistent and hazardous nature of metals, it can accumulate in the living system and cause severe risks to the ecosystem. The abundance of metals in soils from 5 different land use systems (industrial, industrial highway, brick kiln production area, residential highways and botanical gardens) in the Indo-Gangetic Plain region of India was analysed for three consecutive years (2018–2020) to evaluate the effects of metal load on soil properties and ecosystem health. Soil enzymatic activities, moisture, porosity, total nitrogen, and organic carbon were least at the industrial area of Ramnagar site and highest at Botanical garden area of BHU. Geochemical indices were calculated to compare the background status of metals in the soil where Cd, Cu, Cr, Co, Ni, Mn and Zn were increased in recent times. Contamination, enrichment and potential ecological risk factors with respect to Cu and Cd contents in soil were significantly higher at industrial area of Ramnagar and highway near industrial area. Maximum lifetime non-cancer and cancer health hazards were observed for Cd and Ni, respectively. The study clearly indicates that Cd, Cu and Ni are capable of posing health risk and cause imbalance in ecological functioning of soil due to chronic exposure of the potential toxic metals generated through change in land uses in sub-urban areas of Indo-Gangetic Plain region.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Head, Department of Botany, and the Co-ordinators, Institute of Eminence, CAS in Botany and ISLS, Banaras Hindu University, for providing necessary facilities for the experiment. Authors are also thankful to Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory, Civil Engineering Department, IIT, BHU, for providing texture analysis facilities. MA is thankful to SERB (DST), New Delhi for providing J. C. Bose Fellowship.
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Srishti Mishra is grateful to Banaras Hindu University for providing financial support as University Research Fellowship of University Grants Commission, New Delhi, India.
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SM contributed to writing original draft, methodology, data curation, conceptualization; BJ contributed to formal analysis, writing—review and editing; SBA contributed to visualization, writing—review and editing and MA contributed to visualization, writing—review and editing, validation, and supervision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Mishra, S., Jaiswal, B., Agrawal, S.B. et al. Ecological and health risk assessment of different land uses along with seasonal variation in toxic metal contamination around Varanasi city situated in Indo-Gangetic Plain. Environ Geochem Health 45, 3293–3315 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-022-01417-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-022-01417-3