The influence of natural geochemical provinces on the drinking water quality and the public health risk formation

Abstract

The high content of chemical elements in the sources of drinking water in addition to anthropogenic contamination may be due to the presence of the source in a particular geochemical provinces, creating the initially high background levels of chemicals of concern in water. It was found that among 14 geochemical provinces of Perm region in 4 there was the excess of the maximum allowable concentrations in water sources: the manganese to 2.3 MAC and strontium to 17.0 MAC. It is shown that, despite the use of modern methods of water treatment used in the economic activity and for the purpose of drinking water, in drinking water after treatment manganese, fluorine, strontium, beryllium and Nickel exceeding to 20.0 MPC, substance characteristic water sources within the boundaries of the geochemical provinces, are recorded. The event production control does not always include a program of sampling on the specific geochemical provinces of the substance, such as boron, bromine, barium, etc. In the course of the assessment of health risk from consumption of drinking water from sources located within the boundaries of geochemical provinces obtained that the coefficients of the danger (HQ) exceeded the acceptable level to 2.2 times for a number of substances, and the hazard index (HI) of health disorders exceeded the permissible level up to 2.5 times. The total contribution of the typical geochemical provinces of substances has reached 100,0 % for some organs and target systems.