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@article{203476,
        author = {Dr. Lokesh Mathur and Gaurav Vaishnav and Dr.Mohd.Raees},
        title = {Heavy Metal Contamination in Wastewater and Analytical Techniques for Its Determination},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {12},
        pages = {10846-10851},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=203476},
        abstract = {Water pollution caused by industrial effluents has become one of the most serious environmental concerns because wastewater frequently carries toxic inorganic contaminants that persist in natural systems and threaten human health. Among these contaminants, heavy metals are particularly important because they are non-biodegradable, chemically stable, and capable of bioaccumulating through food chains. Their presence in aquatic environments is associated with industrial activities such as electroplating, mining, fertilizer production, leather treatment, battery manufacturing, pigments, and pharmaceutical processing. The uploaded article identifies heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel, copper, lead, mercury, zinc, and manganese as major pollutants of concern in wastewater systems. This review discusses the environmental significance of heavy metal contamination, summarizes their major sources and toxic effects, and presents conventional instrumental techniques used for their determination in aqueous matrices, including atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). In addition, the paper evaluates the comparative utility of these methods with respect to sensitivity, selectivity, speed, sample preparation, instrumentation complexity, and economic feasibility. The discussion highlights that no single analytical platform is universally ideal, and method selection must depend on the concentration range of analytes, sample composition, number of elements to be determined, and intended environmental application.},
        keywords = {heavy metals; wastewater; toxicity; analytical techniques; environmental pollution.},
        month = {May},
        }