Determination of heavy metals in water of ganga and yamuna river basin in allahabad

This research established the presence of toxic metals in the river fauna for a follow up study to determine how the human and aquatic lives have been affected by accumulation of metals. All of their sewage - over 1.3 billion liters per day - goes directly into the Ganga and Yamuna river, along with thousands of animal carcasses, mainly cattle (Bharadwaj et al., 2011).The objectives of this paper were to illustrate the distribution and levels of sediment contamination by heavy metals in the Allahabad city, and to compare recent data with those collected during the early 2001. The metals As, Cd, Ni, Cu, Fe, Pb, Co, Ni and Zn were chosen because of their abundance and toxic effects in the environment of highly industrialized and urbanized areas. The pollutants, which do not remain in water column or solution, could be absorbed rapidly by particulate matters and thereby they also could escape any detection by water monitoring schemes (Meiggs, 1980). Some heavy metals like Cd, Cu, Fe, Ni and Pb were determined in water. Four reaches of the river from Yamuna (river-km 1112) upstream from Sangam to Arail Ghat (river-km 851) downstream from the Allahabad. The total mean value were in the order of Fe > Co > Ni> Cu >Pb. The metal concentrations (mean ± standard deviation (SD) in μg/g dry weight) were Fe, 42.03 ± 1.11; Cu, 5.82 ± 0.21; and Pb, 0.44 ± 0.02.