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A Comprehensive Review of Landfill Leachate Impact on Groundwater Quality and Public Health
Summary
Researchers reviewed how landfill leachate—containing pharmaceuticals, microplastics, heavy metals, and dissolved organics—migrates through soil into groundwater via infiltration, advection, and redox reactions, documenting contamination plumes extending hundreds of meters from unlined landfills and linking exposure to methemoglobinemia, kidney dysfunction, neurological disorders, and elevated cancer risk.
Landfill leachate is one of the major sources of groundwater pollution associated with municipal solid waste dumping. This review discusses the landfill leachate generation, composition, and migration mechanisms, and its environmental impact on the groundwater resources and human health. Usually, landfill leachate has a high level of nutrients, dissolved organic matter, major ions, and emerging contaminants, including pharmaceuticals, microplastics, and heavy metals. The leachate composition is also different depending on the nature of the waste, the age of a landfill, working practices, and climatic conditions. The migration of contaminants in the landfill bodies to the surrounding aquifers and soil systems is controlled by hydrogeochemical processes such as infiltration, dispersion, advection, adsorption, and redox reactions. Many studies performed in Asia, Europe, and North America have indicated degradation in water quality of the groundwater of the regions around landfill sites with the contaminant plumes stretching hundreds of meters around the landfill boundaries. In developing countries, particularly India, unlined landfill sites such as Ghazipur, Bhalswa, and Okhla are major sources of groundwater contamination due to inadequate containment systems. Exposure to contaminated groundwater can result in serious health effects, including methemoglobinemia, kidney dysfunction, neurological disorders, and increased carcinogenic risk. This review further highlights monitoring approaches, remediation technologies, and policy measures aimed at minimizing leachate-induced groundwater contamination. Ensuring groundwater protection in rapidly urbanizing regions requires improved landfill design, integrated monitoring systems, and the adoption of sustainable waste management practices.