Toxicological health risk through groundwater uranium exposure for different age groups in the Chandrapur district, Maharashtra

Abstract

Overexploitation and pollution of groundwater are one the reasons for its contamination. In this context, natural uranium contamination in groundwater is of more concern due to its toxicological risk. In this research carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic risks due to uranium contamination were evaluated referring standard equations given by United State Environmental Protection Agency and compared with the guidelines prescribed by Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and World Health Organization (WHO). While conducting this research 116 groundwater samples were collected from 15 talukas of Chandrapur district and analyzed for uranium using LED fluorimeter. The concentration of uranium was found between 0.02 µg/L to 417.74 µg/L. Additionally, during this investigation carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic risk for 10-year children and 70-year adult was calculated. Excess Cancer Risk (ECR) values for children were in the range between 8.26E-09 to 1.40E-04 for mortality and 8.26E-09 to 1.40E-04 for morbidity. ECR for 70-year adult was found to be in the range of 7.19E-08 to 1.22E-03 for mortality and 1.17E-07 to 1.99E-03 for morbidity. Thus, 8.62% of the adults showed ECR for mortality and 12.06% for morbidity and were above the guidelines of AERB. For children, both mortality and morbidity values were below the standard. The noncarcinogenic risks (LADD) for adults and children were found in 6.89% samples. The HQ for adult and children was observed in 6.89% and 7.75% samples, respectively and was above the guidelines of WHO. The Annual Effective Dose was below the guideline of WHO for both life stages. Thus, in this investigation out of 116 samples 15 samples were above the permissible guidelines of WHO for uranium. On the basis of ECR, LADD and HQ values adults are more exposed to the carcinogenic effects as compared to the children but children are more exposed to chemotoxical effects than the radiological effects.