Pollution Loads and Ecological Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in the Urban Soil Affected by Various anthropogenic Activities

The present paper deals with the assessment of the concentrations and potential ecological risk of heavy metals in urban soil affected by various anthropogenic activities (Al-Karrada) within Baghdad city. The samples were subjected to HCl and HNO3 digestion, and an atomic absorption spectrophotometer was used to determine the concentrations of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn.with the exception of Zn, all the soil samples displayed higher concentration than the calculated worldwide mean of unpolluted soil. Nemerow pollution index (16.33) felled in the seriously polluted domain with the soil environment quality classification of (Ps>3.0). The single potential ecological risk showed that soil contamination from Cd (672) had very high potential ecological risk, which translated into the high value of the comprehensive potential ecological risk value (720.63) in the study area.