Heavy metal contamination in water and fishes from the Shitalakhya river at Narayanganj, Bangladesh

Abstract

River pollution has been a major problem in Bangladesh as industrial growth has led to increase which use lot of chemicals as raw materials. Moreover, anthropogenic activities continuously increase the amount of heavy metals in the water bodies especially in the lakes, canals, rivers and in aquatic organisms which is an alarming rate and has become an worldwide problem (Malik et al. 2010). Aquatic organisms such as fish and shell fish accumulate metals to concentrations many times higher than present in water or sediment (Gumgum et al. 1994). The river port of Narayanganj is one of the oldest ports in Bangladesh. There are also a number of industrial units on its banks, including the cement factory, jute mills etc. Industrial effluent dumped into the river resulting in high levels of pollution is a cause for concern (Murshed 2012). For this reason, the investigation of physico-chemical parameters of water and heavy metal contamination in water and fishes of the Shitalakhya river is essential since even slight changes in their concentration above the acceptable levels can result in serious environmental and subsequent health problems. With this incentive, the present study was attempted to investigate the status of heavy metal pollution in water and fish of the Shitalakhya river near Narayanganj city.The study area was selected at the Bandar ghat as St-1 and Dhakeshwari ghat as St-2 in the Shitalakhya river at Narayanganj from March to May, 2015. Samples were collected during pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons. To analyze the water quality, 500 ml of water was collected in plastic bottles with double stoppers from each sampling site. The sample bottles were pre-conditioned with 5% HNO 3 and later the bottles were rinsed thoroughly with distilled de-ionized water at least three times before sampling was done. Samples were acidified with 10% HNO 3 , were placed in an ice bath and were brought to the laboratory. The samples were filtered through a 0.45 µm micro-pore membrane filter and were kept at freeze to avoid further contamination until analysis. In this study

Water Quality Assessment of Shitalakhya River

“…The pH values were generally found to be constant due to the strong buffering capacity of water [30]. Similar ranges of pH were obtained by other researchers on Shitalakhya River [31,32]. The obtained result showed that pH values were within the EQS (6.5 to 8.5) range for inland surface water.…”

Urban river pollution in Bangladesh during last 40 years: potential public health and ecological risk, present policy, and future prospects toward smart water management

“…As it is connected with the upper polluted river, it receives heavy loads of pollutants each year through this connecting rivers. Higher concentrations of Cu, Ni, Cr, As and Fe (figure S8) was found during dry season in Sitalakhya River water which were higher than DoE recommended standard concentrations for surface water (Tables 1 and 2) [12,37,106,109,110,111,112]. Heavy metal concentrations in sediment was found above US EPA safe limit (Table 3) [113].…”