Wastewater Irrigation, Its Impact on Environment and Health Risk Assessment in Peri Urban Areas of Punjab Pakistan – A Review

Abstract

Due to water scarcity issues in developing countries, wastewater irrigation has become a viable common practice in majority of the agricultural areas of Pakistan. It has been widely claimed that the use of wastewater for irrigation purpose not only helps in addressing the issues of water scarcity but fulfills the nutritional requirements for the cultivation as well. But the municipal wastewater in urban and peri urban areas of Punjab are carrying excessive pollution loads of untreated industrial wastewater, which is becoming a source of subsurface contamination as well as health hazard, due to carriage of toxic chemicals and heavy metals through the drains, being released from the industries. Industrial areas have equally been spread out all over the province of Punjab, thus the issue of irrigation by using untreated wastewater exists in all the regions of the Punjab. This research work reviews the findings of impact of different significant parameters on soil and groundwater and the uptake of these parameters by the plants and vegetations, along with assessing the health risk of these contaminants on humans after consumption. Based on the review, frame work for the application of municipal wastewater for irrigation purpose in the peri urban areas of Punjab has also been recommended.

Amassing of heavy metals in soils, vegetables and crop plants irrigated with wastewater: Health risk assessment of heavy metals in Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab, Pakistan

“…Different studies have addressed this issue in various cities of Pakistan i.e. in Lahore, Faisalabad, Attock ( Rashid et al., 2018 ), Sargodha ( Ahmad et al., 2019 ), in Karachi ( Shehnaz et al., 2019 ; Aziz et al., 2021 ) and Sawabi ( Ali et al., 2021 ). On the other, studies have revealed that only 2% of cities are availing wastewater treatment systems in Pakistan, whilst 80% of the cities use untreated discharge for irrigation purposes ( Ullah et al., 2018 ; Shahid et al., 2020 ; Bashir et al., 2021 ).…”