A large-scale investigation of the quality of groundwater in six major districts of Central India during the 2010–2011 sampling campaign

Abstract

This paper investigates the groundwater quality in six major districts of Madhya Pradesh in central India, namely, Balaghat, Chhindwara, Dhar, Jhabua, Mandla, and Seoni during the 2010-2011 sampling campaign, and discusses improvements made in the supplied water quality between the years 2011 and 2017. Groundwater is the main source of water for a combined rural population of over 7 million in these districts. Its contamination could have a huge impact on public health. We analyzed the data collected from a large-scale water sampling campaign carried out by the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED), Government of Madhya Pradesh between 2010 and 2011 during which all rural tube wells and dug wells were sampled in these six districts. Eight hundred thirty-one dug wells and 47,606 tube wells were sampled in total and were analyzed for turbidity, hardness, iron, nitrate, fluoride, chloride, and sulfate ion concentrations. Our study found water in 21 out of the 228 dug wells in Chhindwara district unfit for drinking due to fluoride contamination while all dug wells in Balaghat had fluoride within the permissible limit. Twenty-six of the 56 dug wells and 4825 of the 9390 tube wells in Dhar district exceeded the permissible limit for nitrate while 100% dug wells in Balaghat, Seoni, and Chhindwara had low levels of nitrate. Twenty-four of the 228 dug wells and 1669 of 6790 tube wells in Chhindwara had high iron concentration. The median pH value in both dug wells and tube wells varied between 6 and 8 in all six districts. Still, a significant number of tube wells exceeded a pH of 8.5 especially in Mandla and Seoni districts. In conclusion, this study shows that parts of inhabited rural Madhya Pradesh were potentially exposed to contaminated subsurface water during 2010-2011. The analysis has been correlated with rural health survey results wherever available to estimate the visible impact. We next highlight that the quality of drinking water has enormously improved since 2011 in all six districts as a result of rigorous treatment of extracted subsurface water on the ground before supplying to rural habitations as well as efficient distribution from healthy wells. Our research could provide impetus to the state government to develop innovative solutions for improving groundwater quality in these areas as existing solutions are largely protective techniques. We have identified specific ions responsible for groundwater contamination in different districts which would allow the development of district specific effective mitigation strategies.

Hearing loss in humans drinking tube well water with high levels of iron in arsenic–polluted area

“…According to a national drinking water quality survey in Bangladesh, the average concentrations of iron in drinking water reached 2.22 mg/L 29 . On the other hand, the average iron level in drinking well water in India has been shown to be 2.2 mg/L 32 with a maximum concentration of 51 mg/L 33 . Iron levels ranging from 0.15 to 25 mg/L in well water in the western area of the USA were also reported 34 .…”

Worldwide Surveillance Actions and Initiatives of Drinking Water Quality: A Scoping Review

“…The responsible for health surveillance actions were professionals linked to public health departments (40; 81.63%) from municipal, state, or federal spheres [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]42,43,[46][47][48][49][50][51][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63]65,[67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76], agencies responsible for water protection [45,77], department of environment and conservation [41], department of public health engineering [78], national water laboratory [30], or in-field sanitary inspectors of the water test laboratory [52]. Sometimes, the surveillance involved other sectors besides health (e.g., environmental, civil protection, and responsible for the supply)…”

“…A study identified the relevance of the Jupiter database, which is an open-access database that centralizes the register of chemical analyses and allows the assessment of drinking water using a spatial-temporal categorization despite the high heterogeneity of sampling frequencies and type of pesticide analyzed may be a limiting factor [84]. The surveillance actions of water quality highlighted in this class addressed the identification of chemical contaminants in households (i.e., lead [71,73], arsenic [67,72,73], iron [71,73,78], nitrate [69,73,78], fluoride [47,78], aluminum, manganese, strontium, and nitrogen [73]), revealed locations that did not fully comply with regulations of chemical contamination [49], and identified volatile organic compounds within the allowed level [69]. Identifying these contaminants has been part of testing programs at residences of people from risk groups (e.g., women with children [71], low-income families with pregnant women, and young children [73]) and assessments of supply sources and sources needing treatment after a disaster [51].…”

“…The following communication and education with the community were developed in situations of microcystin contamination: alerts to the population (e.g., warnings to boil water) [63], risk classification of wells (including with Salmonella sp.) [49], guidance for families affected by disasters [51], counseling in residential and commercial systems [39], and conscientization campaigns for the rural population to improve water sources and comprehend the role of drinking water in health [78].…”

Worldwide Surveillance Actions and Initiatives of Drinking Water Quality: A Scoping Review

“…Those responsible for health surveillance actions were professionals linked to public health departments (40; 81.63%) from municipal, state, or federal spheres [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]41,42,[45][46][47][48][49][50][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62]64,[66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75]; agencies responsible for water protection [44,76]; departments of environment and conservation [40]; departments of public health engineering [77]; national water laboratories [29]; or in-field sanitary inspectors of a water test laboratory [51]. Sometimes, the surveillance involved other sectors besides health (e.g., environmental, civil protection, and agencies responsible for the su...…”