Human health risk assessment
Nitrate (NO3-) is one of the world’s
largest sources of groundwater contamination. The specific objective of
this study is to assess the impact on human health of the continuous
consumption of high nitrate water. Higher concentration of nitrate leads
the adverse health effects and its category as non-carcinogenic risk for
human (Gao et al., 2020). In the study area, hazards index for male
varied from 1.20E-01 to 1.75E+00 with an average of 8.21E-01, for female
varied from 1.42E-01 to 2.07E+00 with a mean of 9.71E-01, for children
ranged from 1.63E-01 to 2.37E+00 with a mean of 1.11E+00. About 40 %,
50% and 53.33% of the sample location exceed the HQ value of greater
than one for male, female, and children, respectively (Fig.9). It
indicates children and women are at higher risk than male through
drinking water ingestion. However, nature of groundwater is the major
source for drinking water sources; especially children, have adverse
health risk through the intake of contaminated groundwater. The
conception diagram (Fig.10 a, b) shows that the aquifer lithological
system and source of nitrate contamination in the study area. The major
source for elevated concentration of nitrate in the study area is excess
utilization of fertilizer, pesticides leaching of dumping waste and
sewage disposal.