Heavy metal contamination of drinking water, primarily driven by industrial activities, represents a critical challenge, with implications for human health and environmental safety. Gujranwala is an industrial and thickly populated city. The current study aimed to assess and compare heavy metal contamination levels in drinking water from five industrial areas and evaluate their potential impacts on human health. Total 100 water samples were collected and analysed for physicochemical parameters and heavy metals. Zonal variations in heavy metal concentrations revealed that Zone 2 had the highest mean levels of cadmium (0.331 mg/L), lead (0.573 mg/L), chromium (0.164 mg/L), arsenic (0.042 mg/L), and aluminium (0.484 mg/L), while Zone 4 showed elevated mean levels of iron (1.88 mg/L) and mercury (0.259 mg/L). Spearman correlation analysis among heavy metals revealed positive relationships among several heavy metals with As notably showing a strong correlation with Hg (0.701**). Kruskal–Wallis test revealed significant spatial variation (p < 0.05) in parameters like pH, EC, TDS, and heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Fe, Cu, Mn, Al), indicating spatial heterogeneity across zones. Spatial distribution maps also depicted heavy metal elevated concentrations of Cd, Pb, Fe, Cr, As, and Hg exceeding in Zone 2 (Engineering industries zone) and 4 (Iron and steel industries zone). The findings revealed a strong link between elevated heavy metal levels and health risks, including dermatological, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and neurological disorders. This study highlights the need for stricter wastewater management, regular monitoring of drinking water, and policies to address water toxicity in industrial premises and to protect public health.

Ethnomedicines of Highly Utilized Plants in the Temperate Himalayan Region

Global warming is a wide-scale problem and soil carbon sequestration is its local scale, natural solution. Role of soil as carbon sink has been researched extensively but the knowledge regarding the role of soil variables in predicting soil carbon uptake and its retention is scarce. The current study predicts SOC stocks in the topsoil of Islamabad-Rawalpindi region keeping the soil properties as explanatory variables and applying the partial least square regression model on two different seasons’ datasets. Samples collected from the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi were tested for soil color, texture, moisture-content, SOM, bulk density, soil pH, EC, SOC, sulphates, nitrates, phosphates, fluorides, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, and heavy metals (nickel, chromium, cadmium, copper and manganese) by applying standard protocols. Afterwards, PLSR was applied to predict the SOC-stocks. Although, current SOC stocks, ranged from 2.4 to 42.5 Mg/hectare, but the outcomes of PLSR projected that if soil variables remain unaltered, the SOC stocks would be likely to get concentrated around 10 Mg/hectare in the region. The study also identified variable importance for both seasons’ datasets so that noisy variables in the datasets could be ruled out in future researches and precise and accurate estimations could be made.

In present study, Water Quality Index (WQI) has been assessed of the Rawal Lake which is a major source of drinking water for people in the Federal Capital, Islamabad, and its adjacent city Rawalpindi in Pakistan. For this, the principal component analysis (PCA) and WQI were applied as an integrated approach to quantitatively explore difference based on spatial variation in 11 water quality parameters of the five major feeding tributaries of the Rawal Lake, Pakistan. The results of temperature in water, total dissolved solids, pH, electrical conductivity, chlorides and sulfates were well within the allowable World Health Organisation’s (WHO) limits. However, the heavy metals like cadmium and lead were above permissible limits by the WHO in tributaries of Bari Imam and Rumli. Moreover, this has been proven by the Pearson correlation which suggested strong positive correlation (0.910*) between lead and cadmium. The results of present study were subjected to statistical analysis, i.e., PCA which gave three major factors contributing 96.5% of the total variance. For factor 1, pH, TDS, alkalinity, chlorides, sulfates and zinc have highest factor loading values (>0.60) and presented that these parameters were among the most significant parameters of first factor. As per the WQI results, the water was categorised in two major classes indicating that water of Bari Imam and Rumli is highly contaminated with heavy metals and totally unsuitable for drinking purposes. Based on the results of the present study, it is suggested to make heavy metals consideration as an integrated component in future planning for maintaining water quality of the Rawal Lake and its tributaries.