Assessing Risks to Human Health from Potentially Toxic Elements in Drinking Water of Duhok Province/ Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Karzan. Hawrami^1, and Hassan. Mezuri²

¹Polytechnique university of Sulaymanyah/Technical Institute of Halabja, Halabja/ Iraq

²The University of Duhok, collage of science/ Duhok /Iraq

Cite this paper:
Karzan. Hawrami and Hassan. Mezuri. Assessing Risks to Human Health from Potentially Toxic Elements in Drinking Water of Duhok Province/ Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Journal of Environment Pollution and Human Health. 2014; 2(2):44-51. doi: 10.12691/jephh-2-2-2

Abstract

The monitoring and assessment of water has become an environmental concern due to contamination caused by man-kind. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the levels of As and some other heavy metals in the pre and post treated water of the projects in Duhok province and to assess the efficiency of these water projects for filtration and purification of drinking water in terms of potentially toxic metals. This study coveres the water purification projects of the entire Duhok governorate areas (Semel, Chambarkat, Zakho, Akre, Shekhan and Amedy). Water samples were collected monthly from August 2008 to July 2009. The results indicated that the As concentration in pretreated water from the Duhok and zakho water project was higher than the WHO guide lines for drinking water (10µg.L-1), whereas in the treated water from the Duhok project its concentration remains above guideline levels. Other metals such as Cd, Pb and Ni at all of the studied projects were higher than the permissible limits in both pre and post treated water, according to the WHO guideline values (3,10 and 20 µg.L-1) respectively, while Cr and Zn were lower than the permissible limit. The values of combined HQ were >1 for all PTEs in drinking water of Duhok, Chamberkat, Zakho and Amedy samples indicating health hazards for the local population. To conclude, the consumption of drinking water may pose high risk to the local population.

Keywords:
assessing risks drinking water Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs) Hazar Quotient (HQ) Duhok province

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