Use of Siam weed biomarker in assessing heavy metal contaminations in traffic and solid waste polluted areas

The ability of Chromolaena odorata to accumulate and serve as biomarker to lead and cadmium metals pollution load had been revealed by this study. Samples of soils and Siam weed were collected to assess impacts of solid waste disposal and traffic density on the environment. Composite sample were collected from a solid waste dumpsite, three traffic polluted areas with varying traffic density and a background site distant from traffic. Concentration of eight elements: cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, iron, nickel, lead and zinc were determined in soil and plant samples and correlated together. Accumulative factors like pollution load index, transfer factor, contamination factor, enrichment factor were calculated for the metals in both plants and soils and used as basis for interpreting the state of the environment and ability of C. odorata to accumulate metals. The accumulative factors of plants were generally greater than that of soil samples indicating increased accumulative capacity of the plant. The accumulations of lead and cadmium in C. odorata were remarkable with contamination factor 10.51 and 23.50, respectively and mean enrichment factors 3.52 and 6.93, respectively. Other metals had lower accumulative factors. The distribution of metals and calculated factors placed solid waste disposal site as the most polluted site while the trend observed in areas with traffic pollution depicts the ability of C. odorata to clean up metal pollution by accumulating them. It can therefore be suggested that solid waste disposal negatively affects the environment more than traffic pollution subject to the volume of traffic.