Human health risk assessment of uranium in drinking water sampled from drilled wells located in rural areas of the Lower Silesian region (Poland) / Ocena ryzyka zdrowotnego związanego z obecnością uranu w wodzie przeznaczonej do spożycia pobieranej z wierconych studni zlokalizowanych na obszarach wiejskich Dolnego Śląska (Polska)

Abstract

Uranium concentrations in groundwater taken from private drilled wells have been never determined in Poland, implying a lack of available data to quantify the human exposure to U through drinking water consumption, especially in rural areas infl uenced by mining activities. The main aim of the study was the assessment of human health risk related to the consumption of well waters containing U, collected from selected rural areas of the Lower Silesian region (Poland). The random daytime (RDT) sampling method was applied to the collection of well waters from three control study areas ( . The average %TDI and ranges of individual %TDI (adults/children) were: 0.17%/0.52% and 0.02-3.4%/0.05-10.3% (CSA-A), 1.3%/4.0% and 0.09-35%/0.27-106% (CSA-B), and 1.3%/3.8% and 0.02-90%/0.06-271% (CSA-C). The estimated average CDI values of U through well water are signifi cantly lower than the TDI (1 μg · kg -1 · day -1 ), while for individual CDI values the contribution to the TDI can reach even 90% (adults) and 271% (children), indicating essential human health risk for children consuming well water from private drilled wells located in CSA-B and CSA-C (5.3% of total number of samples collected).

Archives of Environmental Protection

“…al. 2001, Ćurković et al 2016, Garboś and Święcicka 2015, Ward et al 2005. For this reason, it is subject to evaluation by the State Sanitary Inspection.…”

“…Water is safe for consumption by humans if it is free from pathogenic microorganisms and parasites, as well as from other substances such as uranium (Garboś and Święcicka 2015) and nitrates (Kiryluk 2011, US EPA 1986, 1991, Ward et al 2005) in amounts posing a potential threat for health. Nitrates in the human body are enzymatically reduced to nitrites with bacterial mediation.…”

Analysis of chemical stability of tap water in terms of required level of technological safety

“…Many conducted studies and performed research indicate the strong dependence between water quality and corrosion process together with the material structure of water pipe. Also important issue is implementation of methods for assessing risk of failure in critical infrastructure systems (Królikowska 2011), health risk assessment (Garboś and Święcicka 2015), water indices (Darvishi et al 2016) or through preventive maintenance process (Studziński and Pietrucha-Urbanik 2015) and cost incurred as a result of failure (Tchorzewska-Cieslak et al 2012). As well as implementation of mathematical modelling in environmental engineering (Kaźmierczak and Wdowikowski 2016), unitarization method (Radzka et al 2015) and analysis of pollution source in water environment (Suna et al 2016) constitute the important issue in providing safe water to its consumers.…”