WHO sanitary inspection based assessment of contamination risk in drinking water from community tubewells with handpump in rural India

Abstract

This paper evaluates contamination risks associated with community based rural tubewells with handpump in rural areas of nine districts of the State of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. A total of 324 such sources of drinking water were field surveyed to assess the prevalence of contamination risk based on the World Health Organization sanitary inspection guidelines. In the field survey conducted, a total of 37.7% of all community based tubewells with handpump in rural areas were found unsafe. Significantly, the prevalence of medium to very high risk was widespread: as many as 28.7% of all the 324 sampled community tubewells with handpump were found infested with medium, high or very high Risk levels, clearly portraying a rather alarming situation that needs immediate attention of field engineers, planners and policy makers, who need to coordinate work in order to minimize total risk of contamination in drinking water.