Abstract
The present study was designed to assess the impact of mass bathing and religious activities on water quality index (WQI) of prominent water bodies (eight) in Haryana, India. Water quality characteristics revealed significant increase in the values of nitrate, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), conductivity, total hardness, total alkalinity, and MPN count after the religious activities. The computed WQI at all the eight selected sites varied from 47.55 to 211.42. The results revealed that there was a significant increase in the value of WQI after mass bathing or any other ritual performed. Out of eight water bodies studied three (sites 3, 4, and 5) were found under good water quality status; four sites (1, 2, 6, and 7) depicted medium water quality but site 8 was found under poor water quality after the religious activities. The good water quality status of water bodies was correlated with larger size of the water bodies and less number of pilgrims; however, the poor WQI values may be attributed to smaller size of the water body and heavy load of pilgrims on such sites. Therefore, water of these religious water bodies needed to be regularly changed after mass bathing to protect the aquatic component from different contaminations.
Highlights
Surface water bodies have been the basic resource to fulfill all kinds of human requirements but today water quality of these water resources is under severe environmental stress and under threat due to various types of anthropogenic activities and the condition is more pathetic in lentic water bodies
The values of some parameters like conductivity, pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), turbidity, dissolved oxygen (DO), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and total alkalinity were recorded above or below the permissible limit at some sites suggested by water quality guidelines for bathing given by various organizations (Table 2)
Bacteria of coliform group are considered the primary indicators of faecal contamination by Raina et al [25] that have been correlated with the incidence of gastrointestinal disorders (Morace and McKenzie [26])
Summary
Surface water bodies have been the basic resource to fulfill all kinds of human requirements but today water quality of these water resources is under severe environmental stress and under threat due to various types of anthropogenic activities and the condition is more pathetic in lentic water bodies. Among various types of anthropogenic actions religious activities like immersion of flour, oil, soap, ash, detergents, floral offerings, and mass bathing are one of the important causes that affect the water quality of a water body. The religious activities are deeply rooted in its cultural heritage; millions of people take holy bath and perform religious activities and do Aachman (drinking water) regularly on occasions like solar eclipse and new moon day irrespective of thinking about the water quality of the aquatic bodies. The present study was conducted to depict the effect of religious activities
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