Monitoring and assessment of heavy metal contamination in surface water of selected rivers

Abstract

The current research aimed to monitor and assess the heavy metal contamination in the surface water of 53 sampling sites along the selected rivers using principal component analysis and cluster analysis. For this purpose, both physiochemical parameters such as the temperature (T), the potential of hydrogen (pH), total dissolved solids (TDS) and electroconductivity (EC), and heavy metals such as iron (Fe), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb) and arsenic (As) are analyzed as potential water contaminants. The average values of pH, TDS, EC and T are found at 7.75, 70.89 mg/L, 139.11 µs/cm and 20.29 °C, respectively, and heavy metals including Cr, Ni, Cd, Pb, As and Fe are observed at 0.04, 0.04, 0.04, 0.03, 0.001 and 0.04 mg/L, respectively. Moreover, it is found that in both rivers hazardous metals, including Cr (100%), Cd (92.30%), Pb (100%), Ni (100%) and Fe (91%), exceed the permissible limits of the WHO.