Nondestructive analysis of dumpsite soil and vegetable for elemental composition

摘要

In this study, dumpsite soils and vegetables were analyzed for total elemental composition using a 5SDH Tandem Pelletron accelerator available at Centre for Energy Research and Development, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife. The results at a 2.5MeV energy revealed the presence of elements: Cu, Cr, Ni,Al, Si, P, S,Cl, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Zn, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr and Pb in the dump site soil, with the exception of Cu, Cr,Ni, Zr and Y; other elements with Mg in addition were found in the vegetables around the dump site soil, majority of the elements were at lesser concentrations. However, there was a sharp difference in the concentrations of Mg, Ca and K being present at higher concentrations in the vegetables than in the soil. The result showed no significant difference in the concentration of elements analyzed on each site with the control site, both in the vegetable and the soil samples at 95 and 99% confidence interval. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the soil and vegetable samples also confirmed no significant differences. The relationship among the sites was determined in either direction (positive and negative, 2-tailed analysis) using correlation coefficient, the R2 values among sites were all above 0.5 in vegetable and 0.9 in the dumpsite soil, showing that all sites were well related depicting common components. Fe, Zn and Pb were within the range of concentration of metals in plant but were higher than the permissible limit of International Organization (WHO/FAO, 2007; EU, 2006). High concentrations coupled with high standard deviation values of some elements suggest influence of anthropogenic activities.