TITLE:
Soil Quality and Potential Toxicity in Artisanal Mining Areas: Evidence from Obuasi-Adaase, Ghana
AUTHORS:
Asare Asante-Annor, Blessing Serwaa Duodu, Cindy Ankomah Gaisie, Albert Kafui Klu, Jamel Seidu
KEYWORDS:
Artisanal Mining, Soil Toxicity, Enrichment Factor, Contamination Factor, Arsenic, Obuasi
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.14 No.9,
September
28,
2026
ABSTRACT: The contamination of soils is a problem that has recently become of major concern in the Ghanaian artisanal mining areas. Plants, humans, micro-organisms and other living species within the ecosystem that have a form of interaction with soils are highly at risk of the toxic element contamination within such areas. This study assessed the levels of Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs) in soils around artisanal mining sites in the Adaase community in Obuasi, Ghana. Soil samples were picked from different locations around the mining sites. The concentrations of the various elements were analysed using geostatistical methods, pollution indices were used to determine the contamination levels, and their sources were traced using factor analysis. The parameters mainly employed include the Geo-accumulation Index (Igeo), the Enrichment Factor (EF), the Contamination Factor (CF), the potential ecological Risk Index (RI) and the Pollution Load Index (PLI) among others. The results showed that arsenic (As) is the major PTE in the area with a mean concentration of 80.90 ppm across the ten sampling locations, some six times the average shale background of 13 ppm. Arsenic returned a mean contamination factor of 6.22 (very high contamination), a mean geoaccumulation index of 1.89 (moderately polluted, rising to 2.98 at location D1) and a mean aluminium-normalised enrichment factor of 6.39 (significant enrichment), exceeding its threshold on all four indices at nine or ten of the ten locations. Other elements like manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and lead (Pb) were found to be within permissible levels. These other elements have EF values, 0 ≤ EF