Assessment of physico-chemical characteristics of water samples in Lakhimpur district (Assam), India

Abstract

With an increased understanding of the importance of drinking water to public health and raw water quality to aquatic life, assessment of water quality has become very important. In the present study, a total of 54 water samples are were collected from various water sources, namely hand-pumps, tube-wells, rivers of various blocks of Lakhimpur district, of Assam. Evaluation of physico-chemical parameters such as Temperature, pH, Conductance, Total Solids, Total Suspended Solids, Total Dissolved Solid, Turbidity, Total Hardness, Sodium, Potassium, Phosphate, Chloride, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Dissolved Oxygen (DO) as per standard procedures and result were compared with the standard as prescribed by WHO. The TSS values in few samples exceed the maximum permissible limit of WHO (i. e.100 ppm). All the values of DO observed were higher than the permissible limit.. TS, TDS, TSS, potassium, chloride had high difference between their corresponding mean and median values, which signify that the observed values were asymmetric. On the other hand, other physico-chemical parameters had low difference between their corresponding mean and median values signifying symmetric distribution of observations. Conductance, TDS, TSS, TS had relatively higher values of standard deviation which indicates that most of the values in the observations were spreadout off their respective mean values. The other parameters had lower values of standard deviation indicating compactness of the distributions.