Abstract

The investigation aims to determine the concentration level of heavy metals (HMs) in industrial wastewater in Chittoor district.
The existence contamination of HM causes a serious problem around the universe due to the several sources, toxicity, accumulative
behavior, and non-biodegradable property of HMs. The HMs contamination in industrial wastewater around Chittoor district is
prominent. Some parameters such as pH, hardness, and electrical conductance are used to analyze for each metal. A simple hot
plate digestion procedure was employed using acids (HNO3, Hcl) and developed to determine the concentration of these metals
lead (Pb), iron (Fe), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni), and chromium (Cr) in water by atomic absorption spectrometry technique. This
shows that the presence of Ni, Fe, Cr, Cd, and Pb in the study area has a significant influence to health. Especially, Cd, Cr, Fe,
and Pb exhibited high significance toxicity effect even at lower concentration levels of HMs which obtained was usually higher
than the permissible limit for the safe environment as prescribed by the World Health Organization and Indian standards. The
study region point out the health risk due to wastewater for residents and aquatic system which shows an ultimate concern for
their survival in the region.