Assessment of groundwater quality and associated health risks: A case study of Ranchi city, Jharkhand, India
2017
Tirkey, Poonam | Bhattacharya, Tanushree | Chakraborty, Sukalyan | Baraik, Suman
The pace of urbanisation in Ranchi is increasing since the Jharkhand state has been formed, hence a study was carried to find the status of groundwater quality in peri-urban agglomeration of Ranchi city. Samples were collected from 44 sites in monsoon season from rural, periurban, urban, industrial and commercial zones of the city. Along with the physico-chemical parameters they were also analysed for 10 heavy metals namely As, Mn, Ni, Se, Fe, Cu, Cd, Co, Cr and Pb in which except As, Mn, Ni and Se rest of the elements were below detection level. The concentrations (ppb) of highly toxic metals viz., As, Ni, Mn and Se ranged from 0.0 to 200, 0.0 to 80, 0.0 to 4200 and 30 to 140 respectively which are above the acceptable limits as per BIS/WHO standards for drinking purpose. ANOVA showed that pH, TDS, EC, Total alkalinity, Total hardness, Cl⁻, SO4²⁻, F⁻, Na⁺ and Se showed significant variation at 0.05 significance level. Hydrochemistry was dominated by calcium, bicarbonate and sodium bicarbonate in the study area. These facts are also supported by PCA and correlation. The order of relative abundance of the anions was Cl-> SO4²⁻>NO³⁻>F⁻>PO4³⁻ and for cations was Ca²⁺~Na⁺>Mg²⁺>K⁺. Zonal variation revealed that as compared to rural, peri-urban and urban zones, industrial and commercial zones had degraded water quality. As depicted from Water Quality Index (WQI) 80% of sampling locations have poor water quality, 7% very poor water quality, 4% unfit for drinking and only 9% out of the 44 sampling locations have good water quality. Health risk assessment signifies the probability of the noncarcinogenic effect due to the presence of arsenic and selenium as compared to carcinogenic effect is more for the residents of the study area.
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