Ecological risk assessment
The pollution index (I-geo) provides a useful tool to evaluate potential environmental contamination. On considering the I-geo (Table 3) values it can be observed that all values fall in the 0 class, which indicates the absence of contamination, i.e. almost all of the elements are of natural origin or from natural weathering processes. Only Cu, Ni and Co fall into the class 1 category and these elements are therefore influenced slightly by human activity.