Evaluación de metales pesados en el canal de riego Ambato - Pelileo de la ciudad de Ambato, provincia de Tungurahua.

Abstract

The objective was to evaluate the concentration of heavy metals in the Ambato - Pelileo irrigation canal in the city of Ambato, Tungurahua province. In the research work, a problem of social interest was addressed, which is the detection of heavy metals in water and which causes pollution in the agricultural sector, causing damage to human health. For this reason a physical-chemical analysis of the water of the Ambato-Pelileo irrigation canal was carried out, with the physical analysis it was determined that there is a concentration of 5.96467 g of water per 500 ml of water taken in points close to dedicated industries to the manufacture of jeans. Additionally, it was found that the water is contaminated in greater quantity the first days of the week since in these days the industries carry out the wastewater discharge. For the chemical analysis, spectrophotometric methods in the range of 450 mm were used since the transmittance can be perfectly discernible and this is used to determine qualitative and quantitative the presence of heavy metals. The results obtained for cadmium, lead, and copper show a high level of these metals in the water since an amount of 5.127 ppm was obtained, which indicates that it is well above the permissible limits by the quality control regulations of the Water. Finally, we propose a method that is easier and cheaper for the determination of heavy metals, which consists of absorbance measurement in the UV-visible because the current methods are not portable and are expensive.