Bhadra, C; Pal, S; Adhikari, K
A study was undertaken to delineate the soil and ground water quality near a Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) landfill site in Durgapur, West Bengal, India. Various multivariate statistical techniques to include Pearson's correlation analysis using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 17.0) were used to assess soil quality for parameters like Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Total Hardness (TH), pH, Electrical Conductivity (EC), Calcium (Ca2+), Magnesium (Mg2+), Sulphate (SO42-), Nitrate (NO3-), %Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Arsenic (As) a metalloid and Heavy Metals like Chromium (Cr6+), Cadmium (Cd), Lead (Pb), Iron (Fe), Mercury (Hg), Copper (Cu), Aluminum (Al), Nickel (Ni), Zinc (Zn). Each parameter was then compared with the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) 1991 guidelines. While Pearson's Correlation Analysis was used to find out the relationship between various sampling data, Factor Analysis was applied to datasets to explain the total variance of respective datasets.