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. 2019 May 16;16(10):1737.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph16101737.

Health Risk Assessment of Different Heavy Metals Dissolved in Drinking Water

Sajjad Hussain  1   2 , Muhammad Habib-Ur-Rehman  3 , Tasawar Khanam  4 , Abbas Sheer  5 , Zhang Kebin  6 , Yang Jianjun  7
Affiliations

Health Risk Assessment of Different Heavy Metals Dissolved in Drinking Water

Sajjad Hussain et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Water pollution is a major threat to public health worldwide. The health risks of ingesting trace elements in drinking water were assessed in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Eight trace elements were measured in drinking water, using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS), and compared with permissible limits established by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak EPA). In addition, health risk indicators such as the chronic daily intake (CDI) and the health risk index (HRI) were calculated. Our results showed that the concentrations of chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), and manganese (Mn) were 2593, 1306, and 695 ng/g, respectively, in Lahore and Jhang, while the concentrations of arsenic (As) in Lahore, Vehari, Multan, and Jhang were 51, 50.4, 24, and 22 ng/g, respectively, which were higher than the permissible limits suggested by the WHO. The values of CDI were found to be in the order of Cr > Ni > Mn > Cu > As > Pb > Co > Cd. Similarly, the health risk index (HRI) values exceeded the safe limits (>1) in many cities (eg, Cr and Ni in Lahore and As in Vehari, Jhang, Lahore, and Multan). The aforementioned analysis shows that consumption of trace element-contaminated water poses an emerging health danger to the populations of these localities. Furthermore, inter-metal correlation and principal component analysis (PCA) showed that both anthropogenic and geologic activities were primary sources of drinking water contamination in the investigated areas.

Keywords: anthropogenic; drinking water; geologic; mass spectrometry; risk assessment; trace elements.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Maps showing mean concentrations of different trace elements in drinking water samples collected from different cities of Pakistan.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Heavy metals concentrations in different cities of Pakistan, (a) Cr, (b) Mn, (c) Cu, (d) As, (e) Cd, (f) Pb, (g) Ni, and (h) Co. Error bars represent standard errors of the means (n = 20). The least significant differences (LSD0.05) are at the 5% level of significance. Different letters on top (a–c) of each bar show significant differences among different cities.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Factor loadings for selected trace elements in the drinking water of (a) Central Punjab, (b) Southern Punjab, and (c) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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