A preliminary assessment of soil pollution in some parts of jalingo metropolis, Nigeria using magnetic susceptibility method

Abstract EN

An investigation of magnetic properties using magnetic susceptibility and frequency dependent susceptibility was conducted on 36 soil samples from parts of Jalingo, Taraba State, N-E Nigeria.

The purpose was to assess the level of soil pollution and identify pollution hotspots using magnetic proxy parameters.

The results of the mass specific low frequency magnetic susceptibility measurements show significant enhancement with values ranging from 67.8 - 495.3 x 10P -6 P mP 3 PkgP -1 P with a mean value of 191.61 x 10P -6 P mP 3 PkgP -1 P for the Jalingo College of Education JCOE data; 520.1 – 1612.8 x 10P -6 P mP 3 PkgP -1 P with a mean value of 901.34 x 10P -6 P mP 3 PkgP -1 Pfor the Jalingo Main Market, JMM and 188.5- 1203.6 x10P -6 PmP 3 PkgP -1 P with an average value of 574 92 x 10P -6 PmP 3 PkgP -1 Pfor the Jalingo Motor Park JMP.

The significant magnetic enhancement indicates high concentration of ferrimagnetic minerals in the soil and thus increases pollution.

The magnetic susceptibility of the different land use studies decreased in the order commercial area (market) > motor park > official area.

The results of the percentage frequency dependence susceptibility showed that most of the samples have a mixture of superparamagnetic SP and coarse multidomains grains or superparamagnetic grains < 0.05μm.

In the JCOE samples, the value of percentage frequency dependent susceptibility ( ) ranges from 2.68 – 13.80% with an average value of 8.67%.

Five samples (that is about 30%) are virtually all SP grains as they have in the range of 12 – 14 %, while other samples have values in the range of 2 – 10 % indicating the presence of a mixture of SP and Multi Domain MD magnetic grains.

In the Jalingo Main Market (JMM) samples, seven samples fall within the medium range of 2 – 10 % and may be said to have a mixture of SP and coarse MD grains; three samples have low of < 2% implying that they have no SP grains while only one sample has high of 10.04 % meaning that the dominant magnetic component of this soil is SP ferrimagnetic grains.

For the JMP samples, about 70% of the samples have value in the medium range, and this can be interpreted as soils with admixture of SP and coarser non-SP grains or < 0.005μm SP grains.

Two samples (about 20%) of the JMP samples have > 10%, indicating soils where virtually all the iron component is SP grains, while about 10% of the samples contains no SP grains.

Generally, most of the samples in the studied area contain a mixture of SP and MD magnetic grains.