Modelling the Spatial Distribution of Arsenic in Water and Its Correlation with Public Health, Central Indus Basin, Pakistan

Abstract

Like India, Bangladesh and China, Pakistan also has some regions where concentration of Arsenic in water has crossed the WHO safe drinking water limits, 10 ppb. Presence of Arsenic in drinking water is causing serious human health issues for the local residents of Sindh and southern Punjab, which needs serious attention. The present study is focused on the spatial distribution of Arsenic in groundwater and its relationship with the major reported human diseases at settlement level of District Layyah. Data collection is done by taking water samples from hand pumps and health is-sues reported at the local health care centers adjoining to that sampling pump. The spatial distri-bution of Arsenic concentration in groundwater is done by using Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) technique. Arsenic Risk Index (ARI) is developed based of WHO health standards, and then used to divide study area into two Arsenic Risk Zones as no risk and high risk with As values less or equal to 10 ng • ml −1 and greater than 10 ng • ml −1 , respectively . In the final step these zones were corre-lated with the diseases at village level. The results show that, Arsenic is high near the Indus River and it decreases in central and eastern parts towards Chenab River. Same trend of Indo-Chenab Arsenic gradient is followed by skin diseases among the people especially, in tehsil Layyah and tehsil Koror. It is concluded that high Arsenic amount in water and skin diseases are highly de-pendent on the recharge from Indus River. Y. Hussain et al.