Human health risk assessment of dissolved metals in groundwater and surface waters in the Melen watershed, Turkey

Abstract

Determination of metal risk levels in potable water and their effects on human health are vital in assessment of water resources. Risk assessment of metals to human health in a watershed, which has not been studied before, is the main objective of the present study. Surface and groundwater sampling was carried out between September 2010 and August 2011 in the Melen Watershed, Turkey, an important drinking water resource for millions of people. Metals were analyzed in the laboratory using inductively coupled plasma. Of the 26 different metals monitored, Al, B, Ba, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo and V were found in surface water and As, B, Ba, Cr, Cu, Mn, Mo, V and Zn in groundwater. In groundwater, unitless hazard quotient (HQ) values were 6 for As, 2.7 for Mn and 1 for Zn, while in surface water all metals were below the risk level (HQ < 1). The ingestion risk was found to be higher than the dermal uptake risk. Arsenic mean concentration was observed to be 0.044 mg/L in groundwater. The As carcinogenic risk (CR) value was higher than the internationally accepted risk level (10(-4)) and with maximum ingestion of groundwater the carcinogenic risk was found to be higher in adults than children. These results show that even unpolluted watersheds can pose a risk to human health and that potential carcinogenic impacts should receive more attention.

Human health risk assessment via drinking water pathway due to metal contamination in the groundwater of Subarnarekha River Basin, India

“…Human health risk assessment is an effective approach to determine health risk levels posed by various contaminants (Wu et al 2010). This method has been applied to assess the potential adverse health effects exposing to contaminated water (Hartley et al 1999;Kavcar et al 2009;Sun et al 2007;Wu et al 2010;Chanpiwat et al 2014;Xu et al 2014;Çelebi et al 2014). Ingestion is considered to be the primary route of exposure to chemical contaminants in drinking water.…”

Degradation and Human Health Risk Assessment of Underground Water of Trans Ganga-Yamuna Rural Regions of A North Indian district

“…It is quite clear that the Shankrgarh area has more degradation in water quality (Figure 2A) as compared to Phulpur ( Figure 2B) and in concurrence with that more disease were reported in the Shankargarh area which are waterborne diseases. There are many studies depicting the relation between ground water quality and the disease occurrence however, these are sporadic from the study area [14,15,30,43]. Further, increased contamination of fecal coliform in water samples in Shankargarh as comperd to Phulpur (Figure 3A & 3B) clearly indicates that the underground water samples of Shankargarh appear to pose more of a human health risk as compared to Phulpur area.…”

New Iron Containing Hybrid Silicates for the Selective Removal of Arsenic Oxyanions From Contaminated Water

“…The data obtained reveal that the amount of arsenic removed increases with the increase of HFO content and reaches a maximum value (300 mg As/g HFO-Si) for HFO-Si(5) samples, indicating that the arsenic species is mostly adsorbed by HFO formed on silica gel as reported by Zeng [46] Besides HFO content, pH is also a key factor controlling the removal of arsenic from contaminated water. The investigation of pH effects on the process of adsorption was carried out at different pH range (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12) and illustrated in (Fig. 9) The removal efficiency of HFO-Si increased with the raising up of the pH up to 7.0.…”

“…Arsenic pollution of drinking water supplies was reported from over 70 countries, posing a serious health hazard to an estimated 150 million people worldwide [5,6] . International World Health Organization (WHO) and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and many local organizations made to reduce the arsenic threshold from 50 to 10 µg L -1 in the drinking water [7] .…”