Levels Of Heavy Metals In Ground Water From Abokobi Landfill Site In Ghana

Abstract

A study was undertaken to determine the concentrations of heavy metals in the ground water from landfill leachiest in Abokobi, a suburb of Accra. Nine wells were excavated from the landfill site and the concentrations for heavy metal such as cadmium, arsenic, lead, zinc, copper, chromium, nickel and iron were monitored using wet digestion technique. HCl and HNO 3 were used followed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The heavy metals were quantified using external calibration with standards. Copper had the highest mean concentration of 1.22 mg/l in well (3). This is below the maximum admissible and desirable limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO), an international organization. Chromium recorded the minimum mean concentration of 0.002 mg/l and this was found in wells 2,3 and 5. Generally the study revealed that 94.5 % of water samples had mean concentrations below the WHO maximum admissible and desirable limit.