Assessment of Spatial Variation and Chemical Properties of Groundwater Near Municipal Solid Waste Landfill in Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

The place now used as the landfill in Mashhad (due to the increasing population and expanding city, the place used as the landfill is old) does not follow some of the environmental and socio-political standards and criteria. It makes problems include the location of the landfill site which is close to population centers where there is fertile agricultural land. As a result, there is danger of leachate leakage and pollution of groundwater and land. Therefore the area of landfill needs assessment and investigation during four seasons. With the purpose of evaluation the groundwater chemical properties in landfill of Mashhad, in northeast of Iran, groundwater samples including seven samples from wells and also one sample as evidence were taken. These samples were analyzed and studied in laboratories with ASTM method. The obtained results explained that some quantities of heavy metals elements were more than the permissible levels in water samples near the Mashhad landfill and it may be argued that samples are contaminated in relation to the heavy metals. Some indices that including the metal and heavy metal contamination index explained the water samples from wells contain heavy metal pollution. The methods were applied for water metal index to evaluate the groundwater correlation in study area for metal pollution through measured and comparison by the standard amount.