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).
\(CDI=\frac{CPW\times IR\times ED\times EF}{ABW\times AET}\)