Using pollution indices to assess heavy metals contaminated soil in some Libyan regions

Abstract EN

Soil pollution by heavy metals is an important challenge facing many countries around the world, including Libya.

This investigation was carried out across a heavy metals pollution in Libyan soil using pollution Indices such as Geo-accumulation index (i-GEO), contamination factor (CF), pollution load index (PLI), Contamination degree (CD), Modified contamination degree (mCD), Metal pollution index (MPI), overall metal contamination index (MCI).

These pollution indices shed light on the quality of soil in Libya, and indicate that some of the heavy metals were unpolluted to severely extremely polluted with regard to i-GEO especially for Ni Cu & Pb, and the contamination factor were low to very high contamination status.

the Most of the polluted soils fell within the industrial region.

In particular, some of the sites in the industrial region showed high i-GEO.

CF showed significant to very high contaminated for Ni, Cr, Zn, Cu and Pb for most of the sampling from the industrial area and also because they are closer to a major road intersection with a large traffic volume such as Benghazi, Al-marij Tripoli, Misurata & Khomes.

The high CF index of heavy metals in soil made significant contribution recorded based on pollution load index (PLI).

A very high pollution recorded in soils of Al-marij, Benghazi, Sirt, Zwara & Khomes with PLI ≥ 3.

Also, very high contamination degree (CD > 24) was found in soils of Al-Marj, Benghazi, Misurata, Ejmail, Sirt, Zwara, Albayda & Khomes.

Furthermore, the study confirmed that Al-Marj & Benghazi had the highest levels of overall metal contamination index (MCI).

The results demonstrated that the values of MPI < 1 for all soils studied inducted that the overall of ecosystem is still non-polluted dilution and dispersion of heavy metals content due to large of the study area.

However, the soil surrounding the biggest cities is heavily influenced by human activities, which causes massive accumulation of heavy metals in the soil in most regions.

So, Monitoring and environmental audit should start into action to boost the environmental quality of Libyan soils