Abstract
Groundwater constitutes a significant component of freshwater resources in India being vital for its economy and domestic water security. The quantity, quality and accessibility of water resources forms the basis of balanced socio-economic development and its optimum utilization cannot be sustained unless its quality is assessed. The current study tries to access the quality and suitability of groundwater for drinking purposes in western drier parts of India in the state of Rajasthan. Based on collected data, selected hydro-geochemical parameters, the quality of water has been determined and Water Quality Index (WQI) have been prepared using GIS applications. Applying the Inverse Distance Weighting method, WQI values for 89 villages in the area have been computed, which ranged between 71.23 and 447.39. While 68% of the region had “poor water quality”, only 32% is sustained as ‘good water’ for consumption. The fluoride content ranging between 1.66 and 8.60 mg/L and TDS > 1000 mg/L with average pH levels > 7 (8–9 pH) were found to be very high amongst all the 12 water quality parameters taken for the study. The northeastern region with a WQI value of >250 had the worst water quality. Furthermore, the existing water quality is also examined for influencing two water borne diseases, i.e., gastroenteritis and fluorosis in the region. The study thus establishes that the majority of groundwater in the region is beyond the permissible safer consumption limits, and a large population of the region, which is directly dependent on groundwater sources, is prone to water borne health hazards. A significantly high correlation was observed between Specific Water Quality Parameters in the region and prevalence of gastroenteritis (and fluorosis diseases with R2 = 0.530 and R2 = 0.813, respectively).
Highlights
Groundwater is an indispensable renewable resource found on earth, significant for supporting habitat, maintaining hydrological balance as well as sustaining human needs [1,2]
Water forms an integral part of many other natural resources too; optimum utilization of related natural resources remains uncertain with degrading water quality
Due to scarce availability of precipitation is around mm with summer maximum which makes availability of surface surface water, more than 50% of the people in the region rely on groundwater resources water shorter and existence of non-perennial river systems
Summary
Groundwater is an indispensable renewable resource found on earth, significant for supporting habitat, maintaining hydrological balance as well as sustaining human needs [1,2]. Water contamination and degrading quality of groundwater sources have posed severe threat to human health wherein 80% of water borne diseases in developing countries like India can be associated with appalling drinking water quality and unhygienic conditions [13,14,15,16]. It can be used to analyze spatial distribution of groundwater, problems associated with its quality, assessing its vulnerability to pollution, distribution of associated diseases and at-risk populations and to facilitate targeted interventions for resource management It provides an ideal platform for converging information in relation to the environment and population aspects and manipulating spatial data into different forms as per the geo-social requirements. It aims to identify the association between existing water quality and water borne diseases/ prevailing health hazards in the given or similar geographical environment [23]
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