Assessment of Ground Water Qualitiy for Drinking (Case Study: District Nowshera)

Abstract

Water covers 75 % of the whole earth, out of which only 4.9 % is fresh and suitable for direct human uses. Water pollution causes serious effects on human life as well as on environment. Keeping in view the adverse effects of polluted water on human health, this study was carried out to assess ground water quality for drinking in District Nowshera. For this purpose, seven union councils of District Nowshera were selected and four water samples were collect from each union council. Number of tests were performed on the collected samples and the results were then compared with the WHO guidelines. The parameters assessed in this study include color, turbidity, electric conductivity (EC), Total dissolved solids (TDS), Nitrate, PH value and iron concentration. At some locations turbidity, total alkalinity values were found higher than those suggested by the WHO and the water is a bit harder in nature. these Twenty-four samples were collected from different sources including Tube wells, Dug wells, hand pumps and Pressure Pumps. The study resulted that pressure pumps and Hand Pumps provide good quality of water. In most of study area, the Tube well were lagging in some chemical disparity (like Nitrate and Iron). At the end it was concluded that the Dug wells should either be discouraged or maintained with proper care in far flung areas where other sources of water are unmanageable at limited scale. Similarly, the pressure pumps and Hand pumps should be encouraged locally.