Quantitative Assessment of Water Contaminants in the Rupsha River of Khulna Region for Irrigation Usage

Abstract

Water samples were collected from the Rupsha river of Khulna region to determine ionic contamination for irrigation purpose. The chemical analyses included pH, EC, TDS and ions. pH values of water samples were slightly alkaline in nature. Samples were rated as fresh water based on TDS values. Samples were high salinity and low alkalinity hazards expressing C3S1. Regarding SAR and SSP values, samples were excellent and good classes, respectively. Samples were free from RSC and were very hard class. Regarding PI values, samples were under class-II implying 75% maximum soil permeability. Ca, Mg, Na, Cu, Ni, Zn, HCO3, SO4 and PO4 levels in samples were within safe limit. Cd, Cr and Cl ions in water samples were above the permissible limit and were treated as water contaminants for irrigation. From the present findings, it is noted that the detected ions as water contaminants should be considered for irrigation usage toward food safety.
 J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 11(1-2): 145-151 2018

Contamination Status of Surface Water from the Balu River for Irrigation Usage in Bangladesh

“…Kundu (2012) reported that the concentrations of Ca and Mg in surface waters of Ghaggar river system ranged from 34.50 to 85.50 and 13.60 to 48.20 mg L -1 , respectively for assessing its suitability for irrigation purpose and some documented values were higher than this study. Hossain et al (2018) stated that the concentrations of Ca and Mg ions in all the samples collected from the Rupsha ranged from 2.96 to 3.60 and 3.28 to 4.80 meq L -1 , which was higher than the present findings. The concentrations of Ca, Mg, K and Na ions in the Buriganga river water samples were found to vary from 1.0 to 2.20, 1.60 to 3.10, 0.13 to 0.75 and 0.19 to 1.91 mg L -1 , respectively in winter season (Zaman et al, 2002) and these values are analogous to our study.…”

“…As per SAR values, water samples of the Buriganga river in Bangladesh were excellent in quality and were free from RSC indicating suitable for irrigation usage (Zaman et al, 2002). The computed SSP values in the Rupsha water samples ranged from 25.26 to 30.63% and these values were lower than current study (Hossain et al, 2018). RSC values of water samples in the Turag river varied from -8.15 and -5.53 meq L -1 (Arefin et al, 2016a), which was lower than the current study.…”

“…This finding might be due to the presence of Ca and Mg ions in water samples (Todd and Mays, 2005). Hardness (HT) values of the Rupsha river water samples ranged from 327.67 to 391.51 mg L -1 (Hossain et al, 2018), which were also higher than the present investigation. Similar findings were reported by Zaman et al (2001), who stated that most of the water samples collected from the Buriganga river were classified as moderately hard in quality.…”

“…Correspondingly, the concentrations of Cd in water samples collected from the Buriganga, Turag, and Shitalakha rivers in Bangladesh showed low Cd level (Ahmed et al, 2010;Islam et al, 2014). Conversely, the status of Cd ion in water samples collected the Rupsha river was from 0.016 to 0.035 µg mL -1 (Hossain et al, 2018), which was higher than the present study. The level of Pb in all the water samples ranged from BDL to 0.78 µg mL -1 with an average value of 0.44 µg mL -1 (Table 3), which were far below the acceptable limit (5.00 µg mL -1 ; FAO, 1992) posing no risk to the safety of irrigation water.…”