Hydro-geochemical assessment of ground water for drinking and agricultural purposes and potential human health risk in Aligarh city, India

Health effects are related globally to water quality. The residents of Aligarh city are solely rely on groundwater for drinking and domestic purposes. The aim of the study was to find out association between ground water quality and water borne diseases. For this purpose, the present study evaluated physicochemical quality of drinking water. The water quality was evaluated for both pre-monsoon (PRM) and post-monsoon (POM) seasons based on samples collected from 19 stations. To find the potential health risk and waterborne diseases vulnerability, questionnaires-based survey was carried out. Although most of the samples range slightly above the Bureau of Indian Standard's (BIS) permissible limit, the results revealed the sign of contamination from the surface of the earth. According to result of water quality index, the city is classified as having well to moderate water quality throughout the year. The correlation, HCA, and Trilinary plot demonstrate that natural pollution sources, human activities, and geographical factors affecting water quality in the study area. During PRM, 84.21% area falls under slight to moderate sodium hazard category where as the result gets better during POM where 68.42% area falls under the same category. Overall, the water was fit to be used for irrigation purposes. The accuracy of WBD's susceptibility maps was assessed by RMSE. During PRM, chemical parameters in groundwater, WQI and WBD's RMSE were found to be 0.1483, 0.3157 and 0.212 whereas during POM the results were 0.1822, 0.3172 and 0.1966, respectively. The results obtained from susceptibility assessment shows that drinking water will not have any major waterborne diseases. However, the result revealed that POM season is more vulnerable to some waterborne diseases than the PRM season.