Harmful Impacts of Heavy Metal Contamination in the Soil and Crops Grown Around Dumpsites

Abstract

Waste disposal is a serious global environmental threat resulting in heavy metal pollution. Contaminated soil with heavy metals has become a concern for agricultural scientists because of the progress made in agricultural product safety. Heavy metals are metalloids with biological toxicity. The most common are arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn). These metals exist throughout the terrestrial environment and produced from anthropogenic and natural activities. Recently, the landfills have been reported as persecutor to soil contamination, but still, there is no promising way proposed for the waste disposal management in some developing countries. This is the biggest threat to the soil, crops, and the communities living around the dumpsites. Soil polluted with heavy metals result in human health risks, groundwater pollution, plant phytotoxicity and decline in crop and soil production. Absorption of heavy metals through plant roots is the major pathway in which heavy metals penetrate the food chain and their successive crowding along the food chain is a critical threat to animal and human health. The previous findings reported that soil, vegetables, and other food crops around dumpsites are contaminated with heavy metals. The soil contaminated with heavy metals is a leading cause of vegetables and other crops contamination, which is a cause of adverse health outcomes in developing countries' cities. Therefore, there is an urgent need for continuous monitoring of heavy metals in different open dumpsites. The necessary measures to reduce the high concentration of heavy metals in the soil and crops should be put in place. This paper aimed to review the harmful impacts of heavy metal contamination to the soil and crops grown in the vicinity of dumpsites, but also several techniques treating heavy metals pollution in the soil were discussed in this review.

Lead and Zinc Uptake and Toxicity in Maize and Their Management

“…Intensive fertilizer use, wastewater or sewage sludge, and agricultural and animal wastes can cause the accumulation of Zn in many agricultural soils [ 14 ]. Zn accumulation in soil can affect soil fertility with phytotoxicity, microbial biomass, and soil macronutrient shortage (such as of phosphorous) [ 15 ].…”

“…Furthermore, the addition of Pb to soils via herbicides/pesticides has been frequently reported in the past [ 14 ]. Nyiramigisha et al [ 15 ] expressed that the accumulation of Pb in soil can cause abnormalities in the metabolic function of microorganisms, shortages of soil macronutrients (such as phosphorus), decreases in urease, invertase, catalase, and acid phosphatase activity, and interruptions in water balance, mineral nutrition, and enzyme activity.…”

Some Enzymatic and Non-enzymatic Antioxidants Response under Nickel and Lead Stress for Some Fabaceae Trees

“…Several authors have reported that the toxicity of Pb and Ni could produce oxidative cellular damage when generating reactive oxygen species (ROS), which in turn leads to several detrimental effects on plant cells, so antioxidant enzymes can reduce or prevent the toxic effects of ROS induced by metal stress. (Nyiramigisha, et al, 2021;Kumari andMishra, 2021 andÁlvarez, et al, 2019).…”

Effects of Bio-Slurry and Chemical Fertilizer Application on Soil Properties and Food Safety of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum Mill.)

“…Soil organic matter is considered as one of the most important indicators of soil quality as it controls many soil properties, such as nutrient cycling, soil structure maintenance, and pH bufering [9,17]. However, soil contamination by heavy metals is one of the factors that cause soil health deterioration and plant health problems [18]. Among the main sources of heavy metals in the soil are agrochemicals (fertilizers and pesticides) [19].…”