Seasonal and spatial distribution of trace elements in the water and sediments of the Tsurumi River in Japan

Abstract

The Tsurumi, a class-one Japanese river, has a significant metal loading originating from urban environment. Water and sediment samples were collected from 20 sites in winter and summer, 2009 and were analyzed to determine and compare the extent of different trace element enrichment. A widely used five-step sequential extraction procedure was also employed for the fractionation of the trace elements. Concentrations of zinc, copper, lead, chromium, and cadmium were three to four times higher than that of reference values and downstream sediments are much more polluted than the upstream sites. Geochemical partitioning results suggest that the potential trace metal mobility in aquatic environment was in the order of: cadmium > zinc > lead > copper > cobalt > chromium > molybdenum > nickel. About 80.2% zinc, 77.9% molybdenum, 75.3% cobalt, 63.7% lead, 60.9% copper, 55.1% chromium, and 39.8% nickel in the sediment were contributed anthropogenically. According to intensity of pollution, Tsurumi river sediments are moderately to heavily contaminated by zinc, lead, and cobalt. Enrichment factor values demonstrated that zinc, lead, and molybdenum have minor enrichment in both the season. The pollution load index (PLI) has been used to access the pollution load of different sampling sites. The area load index and average PLI values of the river were 7.77 and 4.93 in winter and 7.72 and 4.89 in summer, respectively. If the magnitude of pollution with trace metal in the river system increases continuously, it may have a severe impact on the river's aquatic ecology.

Seasonal Variation and Ecological Risk Assessment of Heavy Metal Contamination in Surface Waters of the Ganges River (Northwestern Bangladesh)

“…Such an effect was also previously noted by Yao et al [33] and Dey et al [34]. As such, the lower concentrations of heavy metals during the monsoon may be due to the dilution effect of pollutant [35,36]. These temporal variations in the metal concentrations were generally consistent with seasonal variations in metal concentrations that have been reported in other rivers [37,38,39].…”

Accumulation of Heavy Metals in Bottom Sediments of Baltic Sea Catchment Rivers Affected by Operations of Petroleum and Natural Gas Mines in Western Pomerania, Poland

“…Copper content in researched rivers was lower than those described in the literature from Europe and the other side of the world [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. But a comparative analysis of the copper content in Polish rivers shows higher levels in the Radew and Parseta.…”

“…There was a higher level of copper noted in Radew and Parseta sediments than abroad, with the exception of southern Polish rivers and also rivers in France, India, Brazil, and Japan [17,19,20,[23][24][25]27].…”

Risk assessment of trace element contamination in river sediments in Serbia using pollution indices and statistical methods: a pilot study

“…PLI: the PLI for a single site is the nth root of the number (n) of multiple CF multiplied together (Tomlinson et al 1980;Mohiuddin et al 2012): PLI = (CF 1 9 CF 2 9 CF 3 9 …..CF n ) 1/n . CPI: there are two steps in this assessment process.…”