Assessing Heavy Metal Contamination in the Bottom Sediments of Shitalakhya River, Bangladesh; Using Pollution Evaluation Indices and Geo-spatial Analysis

The contamination of riverbed sediments by heavy metals has assumedserious problems due to their toxicity and accumulative behavior. The present studyinvestigated the concentrations of heavy metals from the bottom sediments of ShitalakhyaRiver to understand the level of contamination and their distribution. The averageconcentrations of heavy metals Al, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, As, Cu, Co, Cr, and Zn are 30432.41,10929.21, 391139.13, 23148.14, 38697.37, 14.02, 143.69, 13.37, 74.82, and 200.59mg/kg respectively in river sediments, and their abundance decreased in the followingorder: Ca (79.05%)>Fe (7.82%)>Al (6.15%)>Mg (4.68%)>K (2.21%)>Zn (0.04%)>Cu(0.03%)>Cr (0.015%)>As (0.0028%)>Co (0.0027%). In most cases, the meanconcentrations of the heavy metals exceed the permissible limit. Significantly higherconcentrations of Ca, Mg, Zn, and Cu were found in sediment samples. The heavy metalscontaminations in the sediments were also evaluated by applying index of geoaccumulation(Igeo), contamination factor (Cf), degree of contamination (Cd), and pollutionload index (PLI) etc. These indices indicated that most of the samples were moderate tostrongly pollute by heavy metals and the spatial distribution showed that the northern andsouthern parts of the study area are more contaminant than middle portion.