The current urban infrastructure and demographic development of Uganda and in particular of Kampala city is rapid and does not correspond to the planned socio-economic and industrial infrastructure. This project was justified by the existence of numerous peri-urban areas with unplanned and no monitored san-itary as well as water supply systems. The unsanitary handling and disposal, of domestic and industrial solid waste, sewerage and small car related industries pose a serious threat to the quality of the groundwater resources. Field studies were conducted at different occasions between February and March 2012. These included soil and water sampling in and around five protected springs for analysis of the concentrations of four trace metals: Cu, Pb, Cd and Zn. The method used for leaching tests of the soil samples was the European Standard ISO/TS21268-1, and the samples produced were analyzed in a ICP-MS. Addi-tionally, metal concentrations and dissolved organic content of water samples were analyzed. The ICP-MS results showed that the concentration of the trace metals in the waters were below guideline values stated by the WHO, which implies that the residents are not exposed to notable trace metal contamination in the drinking water. As the total metal content in the soils were below the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Swedish EPA) guidelines, it was assumed that trace metal contamination was not of significance under the pre-vailing circumstances. However, the leachable metal contents in a number of the soils were high, which may pose a future risk to groundwaters.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-171837 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Moulodi, Shler, Thorsell, Jessica |
| Publisher | KTH, Mark- och vattenteknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | TRITA-LWR Degree Project, 1651-064X ; 2013:17 |
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