**1. Introduction**

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> Numerous obnoxious chemical agents continuously enter our environment due to various industrial, domestic, and other human activities. These chemicals have the tendency to pose threats to the survival of living beings, ultimately endangering the ecological balance [1–3]. The water pollution index on account of inorganic chemicals is considered to be one of the major indicators of environmental pollution, which has accelerated in past decades due to various anthropogenic activities, especially, agricultural practices and the discharges of effluents from industries into the natural water bodies. [4]. The release of huge quantities of treated, as well as untreated municipal wastes, to aquatic bodies has also become a problem in different developing countries [5]. Wastewater irrigation has been documented to cause the accumulation of heavy metals in agricultural soils and plants [6–9].

> The contamination of water bodies due to genotoxic compounds like heavy metals and pesticides has been widely documented [10–12]. The presence of various unidentified and noxious toxicants possessing potential carcinogenicity has been widely demonstrated in various genotoxicity studies [13,14]. The reports on genotoxicity studies of various

**Citation:** Kaur, J.; Bhatti, S.S.; Bhat, S.A.; Nagpal, A.K.; Kaur, V.; Katnoria, J.K. Evaluating Potential Ecological Risks of Heavy Metals of Textile Effluents and Soil Samples in Vicinity of Textile Industries. *Soil Syst.* **2021**, *5*, 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/ soilsystems5040063

Academic Editors: Matteo Spagnuolo, Paola Adamo and Giovanni Garau

Received: 18 June 2021 Accepted: 27 September 2021 Published: 9 October 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

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industrial wastewaters and other effluents have globally raised concern over the genotoxic and carcinogenic hazards of the contaminants present in the samples [1]. Since the chemical characterization alone cannot provide sufficient knowledge on their genotoxicity and potential hazard, different bioassays have been used to explore the same. Many bioassays have been effectively used to assess the genotoxicity of complex wastewaters and a number of bacterial and plant-based assays have been developed for the estimation of the genotoxic potential of water samples. Among these, the *Allium cepa* test takes a prominent position because it has a low chromosome number and large size of chromosomes [15].

Soil is an essential resource for sustaining two basic human necessities, that is, production of sufficient food and a clean environment by adsorbing different contaminants. However, certain plants grown on polluted land can uptake contaminants like heavy metals either as ions through their root system or by absorption through foliage, and they ge<sup>t</sup> accumulated in different plant parts such as in roots, stems, leaves, fruits, and grains [16]. Heavy metal contamination of soils is a very serious issue that has contributed significantly to the contamination of various food crops [3,17,18]. Although heavy metals exist in soils in natural concentrations (significantly low) deriving from parent rock materials, these trace amounts do not pose any harm to human health. However, anthropogenic inputs of wastewaters from various sources along with the dumped waste can significantly increase the heavy metal concentrations in soil [19,20]. Excessive levels of heavy metals in agricultural soils not only lead to the disorders of soil functions and crop growth but also, poses serious risks to human health by accumulating in food crops [21–24].

Potential human health risk (non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic) assessment has been recognized as an efficient tool for assessing risks of various pollutants in the environment and is essential for making decisions regarding regulations concerning pollution reduction in urban soil and minimizing human exposure to toxic pollutants [25–27]. Considering the ecological threats posed by contaminants in textile industry effluents, the present study was conducted to assess the effluents (treated and untreated) from two textile industries situated in Punjab, India for heavy metal contents, physico-chemical characteristics, and genotoxicity following the *Allium cepa* root chromosomal aberration assay. Heavy metal estimation and ecological risk assessment of the agricultural soil in the vicinity of these industries were also conducted. The study further focused on the evaluation of heavy metal bioaccumulation in three plant species viz., *Cannabis sativa* L., *Ricinus communis* L., and *Chenopodium album* growing in the vicinity of these industries, as well as the application of various pollution indices to determine the pollution level of analyzed heavy metals in the soil of study area.

#### **2. Material and Methods**

*2.1. Collection of Samples*

2.1.1. Textile Industrial Effluents

Untreated and treated effluents originating from two textile industries (Textile Industry A and Textile Industry B) being discharged into the Sutlej river, Ludhiana, Punjab, India, were selected for toxicity assessments. In the present study, the effluent samples from both textile industries were collected during March 2017. Effluent samples from the respective industries were collected in triplicate in clean bottles, brought to the laboratory, and stored at 4 ◦C until further analysis. The samples were coded as shown in Table 1. The physico-chemical analysis of the collected samples was carried out following standard protocols [28,29].


