Assessment of Physicochemical Properties of Soil at Old Nekede Dumpsite Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Developing countries, such as Nigeria with inadequate waste disposal system unit or regulatory process is at risk of metal land. The study was conducted near a dumpsite located along the old Nekede road in Owerri West L.G.A of Imo State. After the removal of the overlying waste, samples were collected from five (5) different control points of open waste dumpsites (deposit point, North point, south point, east point and west point), 100m away from each other and at a depth of three different dimension (0-15cm, 15-30cm and 30-45m) on an open waste dumpsite using a Dutch soil auger. The data analysis was done using, Excel and analysis of variance (ANOVA) at 5% level of probability using SPSS version 2008 software packages. The Iron (Fe) concentrations in deposit point of depth 0-15cm, 15-30cm, 30-45cm, ranged from 202.85mg/kg, 164.47mg/kg, and 131.33mg/kg respectively. This indicates that successive extractions of metal in the deposit point have high level of iron in waste soil which is potentially toxic to plants if not regulated, this shows that other control point of waste soils in dumpsite area have minimum concentration of Iron (Fe) content which is suitable or permissible for plant growth. Zinc (Zn) concentrations in deposit point of depth 0-15cm, 15-30cm, 30-45cm ranged from 147.5mg/kg, 67.22mg/kg, 26.13mg/kg, this indicates that results of the successive extractions of zinc in the samples have it contents within the permissible limits of 300mg/kg for practice of agriculture. Therefore, waste soils in the dumpsites locations points have low content of Zinc (Zn).

Keywords

• Dumpsite
• Soils
• Heavy-metals
• Physicochemical Status

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