2.8 Health risk assessment (HRA)
HRA is the most important process of measuring human exposure to contaminants by consuming the elevated concentration of chemical parameters in groundwater for drinking purposes (Shukla et al., 2020). It includes major components such as exposure media, time, concentration, receptor exposure, and nature of the environment. Elevated concentration of nitrate was categories as non-carcinogenic risk according to the international agency for research on cancer (IARC). The present study considered the health effects of nitrate contamination through drinking water intake on high densified residents of the study area. The impact of a high concentration of nitrate on the human body was calculated in two steps (Soleimani et al., 2020). In the first step, chronic daily intake was estimated (Eqn.6), and in the second step, the hazard quotient was calculated with reference doses (Eqn.7).
\(CDI=\frac{CPW\times IR\times ED\times EF}{ABW\times AET}\)