Assessment of Groundwater Quality for Drinking and Potential Health Risks of Nitrate Pollution

The present study evaluates the groundwater quality for drinking and human health risk assessment in the central-western part of Haryana state (India). For these, 136 sets of groundwater samples were collected from all blocks of study area. The value of WQI ranges between 65.58 and 467.14. The spatial map of WQI represents that poor and extremely poor groundwater quality was found in the western part of the study area. The NO3- value varies from 10 mg/L to 198 mg/L, with a mean of 88.35 mg/L. It was found that 69.11% of samples showed nitrate levels higher than the permissible limit suggested by the World Health Organization and Bureau of Indian Standards. The results of health risks range from 0.417 to 8.250 for children, 0.284 to 5.625 for females, and 0.240 to 4.760 for males, indicating that the health risk level was higher in children than in females and males.