Groundwater quality and human health risk assessment in urban and peri-urban regions of Jashore, Bangladesh

Abstract This study investigated the groundwater quality and its associated human health risks in the urban and peri-urban areas of Jashore, Bangladesh, where groundwater samples were collected from 67 randomly selected tube wells. The concentration of arsenic, iron, and manganese was analyzed by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). The water quality index indicates that about 89 and 43% of groundwater samples are not consumable for the urban and peri-urban areas, respectively. All of the source water is significantly contaminated with Escherichia coli for urban (31 ± 17.77 CFU/100 mL) and peri-urban areas (76.12 ± 35.17 CFU/100 mL), where about 67 and 57% of water source has intermediate and high microbial risk by E. coli for urban and peri-urban areas, respectively. Children and adults face unacceptable non-carcinogenic health risks for the urban area (4.13–10.67 for adults; 9.65–24.91 for children) and peri-urban area (1.05–5.58 for adults; 2.46–13.03 for children) via oral ingestion. Both groups (e.g. children = 4.25E-03 to 1.10E-02 and adult = 1.82E-03 to 4.71E-03 for urban regions; children = 1E-03 to 5E-03 and adult = 4.29E0-04 to 2.14E-03 for peri-urban regions) face undesirable carcinogenic risks from arsenic. In addition, children are suspected to have 2.33 times higher non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks than adults.