Pollution indices: Geocumulation Index (I-geo)
The level of contamination in sediments is commonly assessed and
quantified using the so-called geo-accumulation (Igeo) parameter. This
was originally defined by Müller (1969) and is obtained using the
formula:
[1]
where Cn denotes the measured value andBn is the geochemical background of the site.
The factor 1.5 is applied to control variations inBn values caused by anthropogenic influences.
The geo-accumulation index (Igeo) was defined into seven classes (Table
1) by Buccolieri et al. (2006).