Assessment of Pesticides and heavy metals pollution of soils and water in Riyadh and Gazan areas Saudi Aribia

Abstract

‫‪Forty different pesticide and five heavy metals residues were investigated in a variety of water and agricultural soil collected from two different locations at Saudi Arabia during the periods in 2003 – 2004. The results obtained from this study showed that most of the analyzed water and soil samples contained different residues levels of pesticides and heavy metals residues, according to detected pesticides / heavy metals type, tested samples type and sampling location, whereas the sampling intervals don’t play an important role in this respect. Organochlorine pesticides, Cadmium and Lead metals were the main contaminated of water and soil samples, while some samples contained traces of other pesticides groups, (Organophosphorous & pyrethroids pesticides) and other tested metals (Chromium, Copper & Zinc) especially of soil samples. An experiment was conducted to estimate the persistence behaviour of some common detected pesticides (Diazinon, Chlorpyrifos- methyl, Endosulfan 1, λ- Cyhlothrin, Deltamethrin‬‬ ‫‪and Cypermetrin ) in types of water different in hardness at different‬‬ ‫.‪time intervals under outdoor / indoor conditions‬‬ ‫‪The decontamination of these five mentioned pesticides‬‬ ‫.‪residues from contaminated water by using natural adsorbents, i.e‬‬ ‫‪charcoal, vermiculite, peat moss and ground nut hull were also‬‬ ‫‪studied. The charcoal and ground nut hull ware satisfactory in‬‬ ‫‪removing these pesticides residues from water more than‬‬ ‫.‪vermiculite and peat moss‬‬