Distribution of 26 Metals in the Waters of the Aquatic Ecosystems of the Cotonou Channel and Lake Nokoué, Benin

Abstract

Metallic elements have various origins: natural and anthropogenic sources as geochemical, marine and atmospheric sources resulting from the fallout of pollutants emitted or dust raised and which are transported by water and air currents. Thus marine, brackish and fresh continental waters may have high metal concentrations. In addition, some essential metals can become toxic above certain concentration values in aquatic environments. The aquatic ecosystems of Cotonou channel and lake Nokoué receive the pollutants charges from the town cities of Cotonou, Abomey-Calavi and town hall of So Ava. The aim of this study is to analyze waters from Eighteen (18) stations identified in the two ecosystems (nine by ecosystem). The concentrations of magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), vanadium (V), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), arsenic (As), selenium (Se), cadmium (Cd), beryllium (Be), aluminum (Al), strontium (Sr), molybdenum (Mo), silver (Ag), tin (Sn), barium (Ba), platinum (Pt), mercury (Hg), thallium (Tl), lead (Pb), thorium (Th) and uranium (U) were measured after acid digestion of the water samples using the inductively coupled plasma source mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). The results of the analyses indicate an unequal distribution of metals in the different ecosystems. However, atypical concentrations were observed at some stations of the lake and the channel. Magnesium, calcium and manganese have very high values in Lake Nokoué respectively at Ganvié market station GAN_M (2990 ± 105 mg/L), Ganvié center, station GAN_C (4991 ± 177 mg/L) and Lake middle station MLak4 (10662 ± 17.03 μg/L). On the other hand, iron, aluminum and strontium have very high concentrations in the Cotonou Channel respectively at Agbato station AGB (5236 ± 103 and 8289 ± 519 μg/L) and at the estuary station EST (6118 ± 68 μg/L). The concentrations were compared to wells and cborehole waters in sixth neighborhood of Cotonou. We have used statistical analyzers such as MANOVA which have made it possible to classify the waters and metals in the ecosystems studied compared to groundwater and Well water waters. We use hierarchical clustering on principal components to identify similarities between stations based on metal concentration with R software packages “FactoMineR” and “factoextra”. In general, we can conclude that most of the metals have an anthropogenic source except strontium and major elements (Ca and Mg) which could respectively provide from marine waters and geochemical sources.