Modelling the Spatial Distribution of Arsenic in Water and Its Correlation with Public Health, Central Indus Basin, Pakistan

Abstract

Like India, Bangladesh and China, Pakistan also has some regions where concentration of Arsenic in water has crossed the WHO safe drinking water limits, 10 ppb. Presence of Arsenic in drinking water is causing serious human health issues for the local residents of Sindh and southern Punjab, which needs serious attention. The present study is focused on the spatial distribution of Arsenic in groundwater and its relationship with the major reported human diseases at settlement level of District Layyah. Data collection is done by taking water samples from hand pumps and health issues reported at the local health care centers adjoining to that sampling pump. The spatial distribution of Arsenic concentration in groundwater is done by using Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) technique. Arsenic Risk Index (ARI) is developed based of WHO health standards, and then used to divide study area into two Arsenic Risk Zones as no risk and high risk with As values less or equal to 10 ng•ml −1 and greater than 10 ng•ml −1 , respectively. In the final step these zones were correlated with the diseases at village level. The results show that, Arsenic is high near the Indus River and it decreases in central and eastern parts towards Chenab River. Same trend of Indo-Chenab Arsenic gradient is followed by skin diseases among the people especially, in tehsil Layyah and tehsil Koror. It is concluded that high Arsenic amount in water and skin diseases are highly dependent on the recharge from Indus River. Y. Hussain et al.

Assessment of groundwater quality in west metropolitan of Iran: An application of GIS and modeling

“…All experiments were performed in the chemistry laboratory of the Hamedan School of Public Health. The physicochemical properties of the samples were analyzed based on the textbook of the guideline methods of water and wastewater testing (Hussain et al, 2016). These are addressed in parentheses including TDS (2540 C), EC (2510 B), calcium (3500‐Ca B), magnesium (2340 B) sodium and potassium (3111 B), iron (3111 B), fluoride (4110 A), nitrate (4110 A), sulfate (4110 A), SAR (SAR = Na/√ (Ca Mg).…”

“…All experiments were performed in the chemistry laboratory of the Hamedan School of Public Health. The physicochemical properties of the samples were analyzed based on the textbook of the guideline methods of water and wastewater testing (Hussain et al, 2016 (Aleseyyed, Norouzi, & Khodabakhshi, 2018). All the urban water reservoirs were covered.…”

A GIS-Based Groundwater Contamination Assessment Using Modified DRASTIC Geospatial Technique

“…Results evaluated by such a method of vulnerability assessment are relative and qualitative. DRASTIC works on dividing the area into several zones based solely on DVI (DRASTIC vulnerability index), which indicates the degree of contamination in the form of hydrological maps [34,35]. The advantage of this method is that the large-scale assessment because of the factors such as net recharge and depth to the water table can be assessed easily to a larger extent [36].…”

Protective Capacity Assessment of Vadose Zone Material by Geo-Electrical Method: A Case Study of Pakistan

“…Isopack thematic map is created by using IWD interpolation algorithm of ArcGIS 10 software. IWD works on the principle that value at unmeasured point can be predicted from neighboring measured points by assigning a weight factor, which varies inversely with the distance from measured point [25].…”