Quantitative Assessment of Heavy Metals in Tannery Waste by the Exposure of Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy Muhammad Pervaiz Bhatti1; Shakeel Ahmad1; Ayoub Rashid1; 1GOVERNMENT COLLEGE UNIVERSITY LAHORE, Lahore, Pakistan; PAPER: 167/Environmental/Regular (Oral) SCHEDULED: 15:15/Wed./Pontal (50/2nd) ABSTRACT: The availability of fresh and good quality drinking water has become one of the major problems of the contemporary era. So, there are increasing apprehensions in the world for occupation of good quality water reservoirs. The exploitation of natural resources and rapid industrialization are directly or indirectly related to the dearth of fresh and good quality drinking water in the world. All kinds of industries release their waste products directly into the environment, making it polluted and unhealthy for human beings. Leather industries also appear to pollute the soil and water bodies with their discharged toxic wastes [1]. These are responsible for uncontrolled contamination of water by their lethal discharge comprised of metals and other substances that is proving poisonous for all kinds of living organisms on the earth [2]. The progress in technological development is assumed to bring prosperity in every sphere of life, but unfortunately some bitter fruits are also being cultivated by them in the form of deteriorating ecosystems. When crops are being irrigated by metal-based polluted water, it not only seems to impede on their proper growth and development, but also yields nutritionally deficient products [3]. Atomic absorption spectrophotometer technique was employed to measure the contents of the heavy metals in the effluents directly released from tannery industries. These effluent samples were first subjected through wet acid digestion process for decomposition of organic substances and concentration of the metals being measured in the samples. The measured concentration of the heavy transition metals by AAS technique was analyzed, and it was concluded that this spectrophotometer method can analyze remarkable concentration of the effluents metals. Therefore, the quantitative measurement of most of the metals in tannery waste is preferable by AAS method. These results overall give a picture that the environment is being greatly contaminated due to high Cr, Fe, Pb concentrations, as well as other toxic chemicals found in the discharged effluents from tanneries. References: [1] Malarkodi M., Krishnasamy R., Kumaraperumal R and Chitdeshwari T. Characterization of heavy metal contaminated soils of Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, J. Agrono, 2007, 6 (1), 147-151. [2] Navneet K., Sinha D.K. Drinking water quality management through correlation studies among various physicochemical parameters: A case study. Inter. J. of Environ. Sci, 2010, 1(2), 253-259. [3] Aschner M. Neurotoxic mechanism of fish-bone methylmetry, Environ.Toxico. Pharma,2002, 12, 101-102. |