Physico-chemical properties and minerals status is an important decisive factor for assessment of drinking water quality. There are limited literatures on this aspect for drinking water quality of high altitude areas; therefore, the present investigation was carried out to evaluate different physico-chemical parameters and some essential minerals status in different drinking water sources. These water samples were collected from different sources like deep tube well, spring, and river from different villages of Leh District, Jammu & Kashmir, India. Thereafter, it was analyzed for physico-chemical parameters viz. dissolve oxygen, alkalinity, hardness, chloride, phosphate, sulphate, and nitrate according to standard methods. Similarly, all the essential minerals viz. sodium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, sulphur, and manganese were analyzed by using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). All the results were compared with the WHO standard for drinking water. The fi ndings of this investigation indicated that dissolved oxygen, alkalinity and hardness were above the desirable level at some places as per WHO standards. Whereas, chloride, nitrate, and sulphate levels were lower in all the water samples collected across the sources. Among all the minerals, iron, potassium and aluminium level were above and sodium, magnesium, and manganese were lower than the desirable level at all the different altitude as per WHO standards. Interestingly, chloride, sodium, sulphur and aluminium level were high in Indus river water collected from the nearby city area. Therefore, it can be concluded that water sources near the city area are more contaminated than the other sites. Hence, present fi ndings indicated variation in physico-chemical parameters and mineral status of water of different sources of high altitude Himalayan region. More or less, the quality of drinking water is suitable for consumption except the hardness and aluminium level.
Keywords: High altitude; Minerals; Physico-chemical water quality
Published on: Jan 18, 2017 Pages: 10-18
Full Text PDF
Full Text HTML
DOI: 10.17352/aest.000007
CrossMark
Publons
Harvard Library HOLLIS
Search IT
Semantic Scholar
Get Citation
Base Search
Scilit
OAI-PMH
ResearchGate
Academic Microsoft
GrowKudos
Universite de Paris
UW Libraries
SJSU King Library
SJSU King Library
NUS Library
McGill
DET KGL BIBLiOTEK
JCU Discovery
Universidad De Lima
WorldCat
VU on WorldCat
PTZ: We're glad you're here. Please click "create a new query" if you are a new visitor to our website and need further information from us.
If you are already a member of our network and need to keep track of any developments regarding a question you have already submitted, click "take me to my Query."