Seasonal assessment of creeks' water quality located near Ankleshwar region of Gujarat, India, through water quality index

Abstract

The world is nowadays facing serious problem of pollution due to the rapid industrialization, urbanization and improper use of pesticides in agriculture. As far as India is concerned, it is one of the developing nations which has highest industrial and urbanization growth rate due to which few states of the India are critically polluted. In Gujarat state, Ankleshwar is one of them, which houses around 3000 small, medium and large scale industrial units consisting of pharmaceuticals, dyes and pigments, paints, fertilizers, copper smelters, ceramic and glass industries and other chemical units. In this context, the present study was conducted to assess quantitatively the water quality of this region. Water quality index (WQI), helps to understand the status of water quality to be used for different purposes by converting the complex multi parameters’ values to a single value. For this 18 samples were collected during summer (pre-monsoon), monsoon and winter (post-monsoon) seasons from creeks in Ankleshwar area as well the industrial wastewater. For calculation of WQI the concentration of potentially hazardous metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) and physico-chemical characteristics (pH, turbidity, total dissolved solids, chemical oxygen demand, sulphates, total alkalinity, dissolved oxygen and chlorides) were evaluated. From WQI analysis, it is observed that water quality status of all sites is quite poor in monsoon season (80.4 – 401.4) as compared to pre-monsoon season (15.5 – 60.9) and post-monsoon season (0.1 – 19.5).