Formulation of a Pollution Potential Index (PPI) for integrated environmental assessment of municipal solid-waste...

Uncontrolled municipal solid-waste dumpsites are major sources of environmental pollution in many developing regions, where the absence of engineered containment systems facilitates the migration of contaminants into surrounding ecosystems. Conventional pollution assessment approaches typically evaluate individual environmental media such as leachate, soil, or groundwater separately and therefore fail to capture the cumulative impacts of dumpsites across multiple environmental pathways. This study proposes a Pollution Potential Index (PPI) framework for integrated environmental assessment of municipal solid-waste dumpsites. The index combines quantitative indicators derived from soil, surface-water, and groundwater contamination with qualitative indicators representing ecological disturbance, noise pollution, and aesthetic degradation. The relative importance of each environmental pathway was determined using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP), which enables uncertainty and expert judgement to be incorporated through linguistic weighting. Pollution severity for each pathway was assigned using discrete impact magnitudes based on regulatory guideline exceedances for chemical parameters and expert-based scoring for qualitative impacts. The PPI was computed using a weighted aggregation model to generate a dimensionless score representing overall pollution potential. A field-based application using environmental data collected from an existing municipal solid-waste dumpsite in Kerala, India, demonstrated the operational procedure of the index and yielded a normalized PPI value of 63.5, indicating moderately high pollution potential. Surface-water contamination contributed the largest proportion to the overall index value, followed by soil contamination and ecological disturbance, while noise contributed minimally. The results demonstrate that the proposed PPI framework effectively integrates heterogeneous environmental indicators within a single metric and provides a transparent tool for comparative evaluation, prioritization of remediation efforts, and long-term environmental monitoring of dumpsites, particularly in regions where open dumping remains prevalent.