Environmental Impacts of Shewashok Oil Field on Sheep and Cow Meat Using Vital Trace Elements as Contamination Bioindicators

Ambient environment is built based on the interaction of living and non-living organism and chemical and physical compounds, and thus, oil field emissions, effluents, and its general waste can be a part of environmental condition of certain area. This study is to investigate the environmental impacts of oil field on sheep and cow meat around Shewashok oilfield. It has been performed at the Laboratories of the Department of Medical Microbiology, Koya University, by detecting and measuring heavy metals and vital trace elements as contamination indicators. 20 meat samples of domestic animals (cow and sheep) in both control and affected area were collected for the purpose of detecting the concentration of heavy metals in the animals. The samples dried and digested with concentrated HNO3 and concentrated H2O2. The concentration of heavy metals of the sample digested domestic animal was determined using inductively coupled plasma–optical emission spectroscopy. This study shows that iron, cobalt, copper, zinc, arsenic, manganese, aluminum, mercury, and chromium were detected in all the meat samples. Overall, this study confirms that the cow and sheep meat are still safe to eat in both locations because only Al, Fe, and Hg were found danger in both sheep and cows’ meat in comparison with allowed limits of the World Health Organization 2017, and all other trace elements are complying with the global standards.