Abstract
Agriculture is a major activity in most rural areas in northern Thailand. The aim of this study was to assess the heavy metal pollution index (HPI) for water supply quality in a rural village in Kalasin Province named Kaeng Ka-am village located in the hillside area of Phu Phan mountain. The concentration of heavy metals including iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), and zinc (Zn) in groundwater supply has been analyzed by the atomic absorption spectrometer. The groundwater supplied samples were collected from eight different locations in and around the region which covers agricultural and municipal area during the monsoon and post-monsoon seasons. The results were evaluated in accordance with the drinking water quality standards suggested by the World Health Organization and Thailand Department of Health Standards. Most of the samples were found within limit except for Fe and Mn contents during the monsoon season at three sampling locations which is above the desirable limit, i.e., 0.3 mg/L. The mean values of HPI were 70 and 46 in the monsoon and the post-monsoon season, respectively, and these values are well below the critical index limit of 100.
Highlights
Clean and safe water is necessary for human life
Physical parameters including pH, total dissolved solid (TDS), and total hardness were measured in the water supply samples
The results indicated that the values during the monsoon season were higher than the values in the post-monsoon season (Fig. 4)
Summary
Clean and safe water is necessary for human life. Groundwater is the majority source of water supply for domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors in many countries (Beyene 2015). The groundwater quality directly relies on the infiltrated water, precipitation, surface water, and subsurface geochemical processes (Jafar et al 2013). Water discharge from human activities directly affects the quality of the groundwater (Vasanthavigar et al 2010). The pollution of groundwater by hazardous or heavy metals is a serious issue because these metals are permanent and most of them have toxic effects on living organisms for human consumption when they exceed the permissible limit (Sirajudeen et al 2014; Chakraborty et al.2009). The main anthropogenic sources of heavy metal contamination are industrial and municipal effluents and runoff from heavy metal-containing fertilizer and pesticides in agricultural lands (Pradip et al 2017)
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