Published Paper Details:

The contaminated soil with heavy metals has become concern for agricultural scientists because of the progress made in agricultural product safety. Heavy metals are metalloids with the biological toxicity. The most common are arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, lead and zinc. These metals exist throughout the terrestrial environment and produced from the anthropogenic and natural activities. Recently, landfills have been reported as persecutor to soil contamination, but still, there is not promising way proposed for the waste disposal management in some developing countries. This is a biggest threat to the soil, crops, and the communities living around the dumpsites. Soil polluted with heavy metals result in the human health risks, groundwater pollution, plant phytotoxicity and decline in crop and soil production. The absorption of heavy metals through plant roots is major pathway in which heavy metals penetrate the food chain and their successive crowding along the food chain is a critical threat to the animal and human health. The previous findings reported that soil, vegetables, and other food crops around dumpsites are contaminated with the heavy metals. Therefore, there is an urgent need for continuous monitoring of the heavy metals in different open dumpsites. The necessary measures to reduce the high concentration of the heavy metals in the soil and crops should be put in place. This paper aimed to review harmful impacts of heavy metals contamination to soil and crops grown in vicinity of the dumpsites, but also several techniques treating heavy metals pollution in the soil were discussed in this review.