Heavy-Metal Concentrations in Sediments Collected from ICRISAT Lake, Patancheru, India

To determine and characterize the initial background concentrations of heavy metals, a total of 50 sediment samples were collected from the largest lake at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Patancheru, India. The finely ground sediment samples were digested using a microwave-assisted digestion method and analyzed for 15 heavy metals using inductively coupled plasma–optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The results showed that the concentrations of the heavy metals varied greatly with metal and sediment sample, but in general the concentrations were low. Our results suggest that the sediments from this lake (15 ha in area) at the ICRISAT center do not appear contaminated with the heavy metals evaluated, and they indeed reflect normal background concentrations of these metals released through the natural process of weathering