Author/Authors :
eghomwanre, aimuanmwosa university of benin - faculty of life sciences - department of environmental management and toxicology, Nigeria , obayagbona, nosa university of benin - faculty of life sciences - department of environmental management and toxicology, Nigeria , ilontumhan, covenant federal university of agriculture - college of environmental resources management - department of environmental management and toxicology, Nigeria
Abstract :
A major factor which has contributed to the declining environmental and health conditions of urban communities is the indiscriminate dumping of solid waste in premises of public institutions such as public schools. The microbiological and physicochemical properties of surface soil samples obtained from twelve (12) waste dumpsites located in public schools across Benin City, Edo State were assessed using standard procedures. Sampling was conducted between the months of May and July 2018. The mean heterotrophic bacterial and fungi counts for the soil samples ranged from 2.81 ± 1.01 to 6.38 ± 1.78 (×10^4cfu/g) and 2.00 ± 0.73 to 7.03 ± 0.86 (×10^3cfu/g), respectively. Ten microbial isolates were tentatively identified as follows: Acinetobacter sp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Micrococcus sp., Bacillus sp., Klebsiella sp., Enterobacter sp., Aspergillus niger, Penicillium sp., Mucor sp., and Fusarium sp. Pseudomonas sp. was the most dominant (16.00%) amongst the bacterial isolates, whilst Enterobacter sp (4.00%) was the least occurring bacterial isolate. Aspergillus sp. (17.00%) was the highest occurring fungal isolate, while the Fusarium sp. (8.00%) was the least. The mean concentration of the physicochemical results showed values which ranged from 5.82 ± 1.58 to 6.72 ± 1.17, 77.22 ± 6.14 ± 2.00 to 259.67 ± 64.34 μS/cm, 2.26 ± 0.53 to 5.83 ± 1.18 mg/kg, 29.11 ± 16.11 to 60.06 ± 10.76 mg/kg, 13.99 ± 3.22 to 33.57 ± 26.57 mg/kg, 6.42 ± 0.46 to 13.91 ± 2.43 mg/kg, 1.44 ± 0.72 to 3.83 ± 2.47%, 2.28 ± 0.69 to 6.71 ± 4.05% for pH, electrical conductivity (EC), Sulphate (SO-4), Nitrate (NO-3), Phosphate (PO4^-3), Ammonium (NH4+), Total Organic Carbon (TOC) and Total Organic Matter (TOM), respectively. There was a significant difference between the values of most of the physicochemical parameters of the soil from the dumpsites and control sites. The presence of potential pathogenic microorganisms in the soils collected from the respective dumpsites is a major public health risk.
Keywords :
Public schools , dumpsites , physicochemical , microbial and Benin City
