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Samir Touaylia1Samir Ghannem1
Hela Toumi1
Mustapha Bejaoui1
Josefina Garrido2
Original Research Article
Assessment of heavy metals status in northern Tunisia using contamination indices: Case of the Ichkeul steams system
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*Corresponding Author E-mail: toysam2010(at)yahoo.fr
Samir Touaylia1 |
Samir Ghannem1 |
Hela Toumi1 |
Mustapha Bejaoui1 |
Josefina Garrido2 |
Article Number: irjpeh.16.027 | Pages: 209-217 | Vol.3 (9), September 2016 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15739/irjpeh.16.027
Received: July 2, 2016 Accepted: August 24, 2016 Published: September 26, 2016
Abstract
The risk of heavy metals is major environmental problem. The levels of heavy metals enrichments in the sediments sampled from the Ichkeul wetland streams system were determined using contamination indices: the contamination factor (CF), geo-accumulation index (Igeo), and pollution load index (PLI). The obtained data for the geo-accumulation index revealed that sampled sediments are unpolluted for Fe, Zn, Mn, Ni, Cu, and Cr, while the levels of Cd and Pb indicated a moderate to heavy contamination. A similar profile was given by the data of the contamination factor. The pollution load index showed low values in all studied samples, ranging between 0.45 and 1.35. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis highlighted three main groups suggesting that they derived from same sources.
Keywords: Streams, wetland, heavy metals, contamination indexes
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