ANNOUNCEMENTS
Soil pollution is leading cause of food security and health security. Land degradation is exponentially rising due to increasing industrial activities at various levels. “Soil pollution” implies the existence of an unwanted toxic elements at a higher-than permissible concentration that has unfavorable impacts on environment and human health (FAO and ITPS, 2015). To address the challenge, research study is designed, to assess the presence of toxic heavy metals like Fe, Zn and Cu in Selaqui Pharma City, Industrial Area sewage effluent soil to predict the impact of contaminants on the soil quality. The Selaqui Pharma City, industrial area, sewage effluent soil was assessed, it was observed that the sewage effluent soil heavy metal concentration of Cu, Fe, Zn (0.075, 1.54, 0.065 ppm) are under the permissible limit as per the WHO guidelines and all other physio-chemical soil parameters also depicts that soil quality is good and does not pose any immediate risk to the environment.
The linear correlation analysis performed to assess the relationship between soil quality parameters (soil pH, EC, N, P, K, SOC, SOM) and heavy metals (Cu, Fe, Zn). This study establishes that the heavy metals have significant impact on pH, electric conductivity, nitrogen concentration, potassium concentration and on soil organic carbon. If the heavy metals concentration increases in the soil, there will be an equivalent impact on other soil factors. So, it is important to manage and monitor the heavy metal concentration otherwise, it will lead to deterioration of soil quality.
Keywords: Sewage effluent, Heavy metal, Soil Quality Assessment, Selaqui, Uttarakhand, Land Degradation.
