Atlas of Contaminated Sites

Notable case, Kasur, Punjab (Kasur District), Pakistan

Kasur tanneries

قصور

Kasur, south of Lahore, is Pakistan's second leather-producing city and tans hides mainly with chromium salts. Chromium moves from wastewater to farm soil and to the vegetables of nearby villages, and the tannery solid-waste dump sends leachate into the fields with each monsoon.

Phytoremediation

Status
Contained
Media
soil, groundwater, surface water, living organisms
Kind of site
tanneries, landfill

Contaminants

Metals

Other inorganics

Mixtures and waste

Status

Contained

The tanneries are operating. Their effluent goes to a common treatment plant run by the Kasur Tanneries Waste Management Agency (KTWMA), which also has an open solid-waste dump. Studies from 2017, 2022 and 2026 show that chromium and leachate still reach nearby fields and that groundwater quality is at the limit. The year the plant started was not verified.

Story

Leather is Pakistan's second export sector and Kasur is one of its centres, trading and collecting hides as well as tanning them (Ali et al. 2022; Wikipedia). Chrome tanning is the method most widely used.

Shafiq and colleagues (2017) sampled irrigation water, soil and vegetables at 30 points in each of three villages near the KTWMA treatment plant and dump. Chromium increased along the chain: 2.02–4.40 mg/L in the wastewater used for irrigation, 25.2–37.7 mg/kg in soil, 156.7–248.3 mg/kg in seasonal vegetables, above permitted limits. Contamination followed distance from the plant and the direction of runoff; the worst-affected village was Faqeeria Wala.

A 2026 study of two 2-hectare fields beside the dump found cadmium, chromium, copper, manganese, nickel, sodium and potassium in the leachate above the provincial limits for industrial effluent, and maize and potato yields down to a third of those in unpolluted fields. In the city's groundwater, drawn from hand pumps and wells, most sampling points were on the threshold of losing drinking quality; the Mangal Mandi district was the worst (Ali et al. 2022).

Timeline

  1. 2017The mapping of chromium in water, soil and vegetables of three villages is published.
  2. 2022The study of the city's groundwater quality is published.
  3. 2026The study of leachate from the tannery waste dump is published.

Remediation

  1. —effluent treatmentCommon tannery effluent treatment plant and solid-waste dump run by KTWMA.

Plants and fungi at this site

PhytoremediationGreenhouse, with soil from the site

Zea mays

Pot trial on tannery-polluted soils from Kasur and Sialkot: four maize cultivars with and without 3% biochar. This is not phytoextraction: the aim is to immobilise chromium and let the crop grow.

Outcome Biochar lowered the available chromium fraction in soil and Cr(VI) and Cr(III) in roots and shoots, and raised height, biomass and photosynthesis; cultivar P-1543 was the most tolerant in both soils. The abstract gives no percentages.

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Plants

Fungi

The rest are on the contaminant pages.

Sources

  1. Shafiq M. et al. Modeling of Cr contamination in the agricultural lands of three villages near the leather industry in Kasur, Pakistan, using statistical and GIS techniques, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 2017
  2. Ali H.Q. et al. Tanneries impact on groundwater quality: a case study of Kasur city in Pakistan, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 2022
  3. Shafiq M., Maqbool T., Nazir A. Leachate arising from tannery solid waste open dump and its safety and productivity threats to food crops in adjoining agricultural fields, Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 2026
  4. Kasur, Wikipedia, 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.