Estimation of water pollution and probability of health risk due to imbalanced nutrients in River Ganga, India

Abstract

The River Ganga is the largest, perennial and one of the sacred rivers in India. It supports the lifeline of major population in urban and rural areas existing in the river basin. The river is a chief source of water supply, power generation, river borne traffic and expansion of the urban industrial belt. However, the river receives huge amount of untreated wastewater which imbalance the nutrient concentration at many points along the stretch. Therefore, the present study is focused to estimate the water pollution using water quality indices such as OPI, NSFWQI, CPI and HPI and identify the imbalance nutrients (i.e. NO3, PO4, heavy metals etc.) in the river. Also, the probability of health risk that might occur by drinking the river water has been classified using RAI. The water samples were collected in post and pre monsoon months in the year 2014-15, from nine sampling locations between Haridwar to Garhmukteshwar. The results indicate that the water quality of river Ganga is unsuitable for drinking during sampling Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 22:13 23 June 20162 months, because the average NSFWQI was found to be 53.44 and 43.56, while CPI was 2.71 and 2.82 in post and pre monsoon, respectively. The river water has been found to be severely contaminated due to heavy metals (i.e. HPI>3) and indicates the human health risk (i.e. RAI>1).Therefore, it has been suggested that the river water must be treated to balance the nutrient concentration before used for drinking. Further, by comparative analysis of indices, NSFWQI and CPI have been found as the better suitable index to classify the status of water quality.

Estimation of physicochemical characteristics and associated metal contamination risk in the Narmada River, India

“…CPI: It is based on parameters (like DO, pH, BOD, EC, COD, alkalinity, turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), total hardness (TH) and chloride) whose standard acceptable concentration limits (SAL) in drinking water have been prescribed as per BIS [26] and WHO [27]. It has been proved to be a trustworthy method for meaningful classification of the overall WQ status in a freshwater body [28]. The mathematical equations (Eq.…”

Impact of river channelization and riverfront development on fluvial habitat: evidence from Gomti River, a tributary of Ganges, India

“…The river systems in the Ganga Basin in India are facing several challenges such as increasing urbanization, water intensive agriculture, deforestation, invasive species, flow regulation, water extraction and sand mining (Bandyopadhyay 2017; Chaudhary et al 2017;Kumar 2017;Tandon and Sinha 2018). The impacts of these individually or in combination usually lead to a decrease in overall biodiversity because of several stressors including water quality deterioration, biologically unsuitable flow regimes, dispersal barriers, altered inputs of organic matter, sediment or sunlight and degraded habitat.…”

The Valuation of Water Quality: A Conceptual Framework for Households’ and Producers’ Willingness to Pay in Dhaka, Bangladesh

“…On the other hand, by using the wastewater, farmers grow several cash crops like red amaranth, radish, cabbage, carrot, gourd, pumpkin gourd, and other leafy vegetables in the urban and peri-urban area, and it is found the harmful toxins substances in such vegetables (Islam, Ahmed, Habibullah-Al-Mamun, & Masunaga, 2014;Mohiuddin, Alam, Rahman, Islam, & Ahmed, 2016;Sarkar et al, 2015;Uddin, Khanom, Al Mamun, & Parveen, 2016). Experts warned that the using of wastewater in crop production can deteriorate the public health situation in Dhaka city (Chaudhary, Mishra, & Kumar, 2016;Hossain et al, 2015;Lu et al, 2015).…”

“…However, the common argument is that urban rivers in Dhaka are contaminated because of the poor sewerage system, uses of old technology, lack of awareness on waste management, weak enforcement mechanisms on pollution prevention and regulation and lack of cooperation among stakeholders (Alam, 2013;Hoque & Clarke, 2013;Islam, 2015). Therefore, a lack of integration of environmental issues in future water improvement activities may lead to social and environmental pollution problems which in return create a problem on drinking water scarcity and public health hazards and may require enormous resources when the need is there to improve the water quality (Chaudhary et al, 2016).…”