The wetland of Thane Creek, located at Thane, Mumbai, India, has attracted much attention of environmental biologists over the last few decades, as this creek has been subjected to a lot of pollution from the Asia's biggest Thane - Belapur Industrial Complex located at the south of Mumbai harbour along the west coast of India. This paper advocates habitat conservation and ecological studies with special reference to the pollution due to heavy metals and physico-chemical characteristics of the soil along the creek area. The constituents monitored included bulk density, specific gravity, moisture content, pH, EC, alkalinity and chlorinity. The soil samples where also analysed for their heavy metal contents like Ni, Zn, Cd, Cu, Fe, As and Hg. These heavy metals have a marked effect on the aquatic flora and fauna which through bio magnification enter the food chain and ultimately affect the human beings as well.

Keywords: soil contamination, environmental pollution, heavy metals, physico-chemical characteristics, metallic contaminants, wetlands, flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry, bioaccumulation, food chain, Thane Creek, India, water pollution