Industrialization: Hazardous to the Environment?

      A group of researchers from the Yokohama National University in Japan teamed up with scientists from the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh to investigate soil samples taken in and around Dhaka City.  The soil samples were transported to Japan, where they were tested to see what kind of potentially hazardous elements were in them.  The samples were taken from twelve different land use urban soils.  Some of these twelve soil types were from park areas and  playgrounds, where others were taken from construction sites, petrol stations, agricultural farms, and waste burning sites.
      The soil samples were ground up and air dried.  They were kept frozen until they could be chemically analyzed.  0.3 grams of each sample were chemically treated with nitric acid and hydrochloric acid.  These solutions was filtered and stored in polypropylene tubes made by Nalgene.  "For hazardous elements, samples were analyzed using an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer."  After that, they did some calculations of soil pollution indexes.  Based on enrichment factors, contamination factors, pollution load index, and potential ecological risks, they analyzed the data that they got.
      In all but two of the twelve different sample places, the contamination levels of hazardous elements were "very high."  The only two that were not "very high" were the park area and the playground, but these were labeled "considerable."  The table that showed the potential ecological risk factor said that all of the twelve samples except for the playground were at very high risk.
      This study showed that samples taken from tannery waste, metal workshops, and electrical waste sites were the most hazardous places.  More than seventy percent of the samples taken from these three types of sites exceeded the "Dutch soil quality target value."  It was also noted that the containation of lead in the soil at some sites could possibly be traced back to the origin, which was dust from lead-acid battery factories.
      If countries like Bangladesh do not control the way they are becoming more modern, they could potentially harm the environment that they live in.  They could be placing their citizens in risk of disease and death.  They should be more aware of the way they are contaminating the soil, and try to reduce those methods that are spreading hazardous materials.


Islam, S., Ahmed, K., Habibullah-Al-Mamun, Masunaga, S. 2015. Potential ecological risk of hazardous elements in different land-use urban soils of Bangladesh. Science of the Total Environment 2015-04-15 512-513:94-102