Assessment of Soil Quality of Automobile Mechanic Workshops in Obio/ Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

Scientists wanted to find out if the soil around car repair shops in some neighborhoods in Nigeria has dirty metals in it. These metals can come from things like car parts and oils used at the workshops. To do this, they took small samples of dirt from four different areas where cars are fixed. They also took some samples from nearby places that weren’t car workshops to see what normal soil looks like. The scientists used special tools to measure how dirty the soil is and found that, overall, the soil is somewhat polluted, especially in one area called Rumuosi. Because of this, they think it’s important to make rules and take action to clean up the soil and keep the environment safe. They suggest that people who run the workshops should follow better practices to prevent more pollution and that cleaning the dirty soil would help make the environment healthier. They tested the soil to see how much of certain metals like lead, cadmium, manganese, iron, and copper were there. They found that these metals were in the soil, especially iron and manganese, and sometimes the levels were higher than in the clean areas. This means the soil near the workshops is getting polluted with these metals, likely because of the work done there