Harmful Impacts of Heavy Metal Contamination in the Soil and Crops Grown Around Dumpsites

Waste disposal is a serious global environmental threat resulting in heavy metal pollution. Contaminated soil with heavy metals has become a concern for agricultural scientists because of the progress made in agricultural product safety. Heavy metals are metalloids with biological toxicity. The most common are arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn). These metals exist throughout the terrestrial environment and produced from anthropogenic and natural activities. Recently, the landfills have been reported as persecutor to soil contamination, but still, there is no promising way proposed for the waste disposal management in some developing countries. This is the biggest threat to the soil, crops, and the communities living around the dumpsites. Soil polluted with heavy metals result in human health risks, groundwater pollution, plant phytotoxicity and decline in crop and soil production. Absorption of heavy metals through plant roots is the major pathway in which heavy metals penetrate the food chain and their successive crowding along the food chain is a critical threat to animal and human health. The previous findings reported that soil, vegetables, and other food crops around dumpsites are contaminated with heavy metals. The soil contaminated with heavy metals is a leading cause of vegetables and other crops contamination, which is a cause of adverse health outcomes in developing countries’ cities. Therefore, there is an urgent need for continuous monitoring of heavy metals in different open dumpsites. The necessary measures to reduce the high concentration of heavy metals in the soil and crops should be put in place. This paper aimed to review the harmful impacts of heavy metal contamination to the soil and crops grown in the vicinity of dumpsites, but also several techniques treating heavy metals pollution in the soil were discussed in this review.