Water Quality Index and Human Health Risk Assessment of Drinking Water in Selected Urban Areas of a Mega City

Rab Nawaz; Iqra Nasim; Ali Irfan; Amjad Islam; Ayesha Naeem; Nadia Ghani; Muhammad Atif Irshad; Maria Latif; Badar Un Nisa; Riaz Ullah

doi:10.3390/toxics11070577

Water Quality Index and Human Health Risk Assessment of Drinking Water in Selected Urban Areas of a Mega City

Toxics. 2023 Jul 2;11(7):577. doi: 10.3390/toxics11070577.

Authors

Rab Nawaz^{1

2}, Iqra Nasim^{1

3}, Ali Irfan⁴, Amjad Islam⁵, Ayesha Naeem¹, Nadia Ghani³, Muhammad Atif Irshad¹, Maria Latif¹, Badar Un Nisa⁶, Riaz Ullah⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Sciences, The University of Lahore, Lahore 54000, Pakistan.
² Research and Knowledge Transfer, INTI International University, Putra Nilai 71800, Malaysia.
³ Department of Environmental Sciences, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore 54000, Pakistan.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan.
⁵ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou 515031, China.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, The University of Lahore, Sargodha 40100, Pakistan.
⁷ Department of Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The present study was conducted to evaluate the quality of drinking water and assess the potential health hazards due to water contaminants in selected urban areas of Lahore, Pakistan. Water samples were collected from ten sites and analyzed for different physico-chemical parameters including turbidity, color, pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), nitrates, fluoride, residual chlorine, and total hardness. Additionally, heavy metal (arsenic) and microbial parameters (E. coli) were also determined in the water samples. Drinking water quality evaluation indices, including the water quality index (WQI) for physico-chemical and biological parameters and human health risk assessment (HHRA) for heavy metal were estimated using the analytical results of the target parameters. It was found in most of the areas that the levels of arsenic, fluoride, TDS, and residual chlorine were higher than those recommended by the National Environmental Quality Standard (NEQS) and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. In addition to the physico-chemical parameters, microbial content (E. coli) was also found in the drinking water samples of the selected areas. Statistical analysis of the results indicated that levels of target parameters in drinking water samples are significantly different between sampling sites. The WQI for all physico-chemical and microbial parameters indicated that drinking water in most of the areas was unfit and unsuitable (WQI > 100) for drinking purposes except for the water of Bhatti Gate and Chota Gaon Shahdara with a WQI of 87 and 91, respectively. Drinking water in these areas had a very poor WQI rating. According to HHRA, drinking water from the selected sites was found to be of high risk to children and adults. The carcinogenic risk of arsenic indicated that all samples were of high risk to both adults and children (4.60 and 4.37 × 10^-3, respectively). Regular monitoring of drinking water quality is essential, and proactive measures must be implemented to ensure the treatment and availability of safe drinking water in urban areas.

Keywords: arsenic; health risk assessment; heavy metals; water contamination; water quality.

Grants and funding

000/: This research was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Saudi Arabia