Impact of Covid-19 Lockdown on Availability of Drinking Water in the Arsenic-Affected Ganges River Basin

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Ashok Ghosh¹  Debapriya Mondal²  Madhumita Chakraborty³  Srimanti Duttagupta⁴  Soumendra N. Bhanja⁵  Soumyajit Sarkar⁶  Abhijit Mukherjee⁶  Avishek Dutta⁷ 

[1] Bihar State Pollution Control Board, Patliputra, Patna, Bihar 800010, India;Centre for Clinical Education, Institute of Medical and Biomedical Education St George’s, University of London, London SW17 0RE, UK;Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India;Graduate School of Public Health, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA;Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, Karnataka 560012, India;School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India;Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA;

关键词: Ganges river;    COVID-19;    water quality;    lockdown;    BOD;    COD;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph18062832

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has not only resulted in immense loss of human life, but it also rampaged across the global economy and socio-cultural structure. Worldwide, countries imposed stringent mass quarantine and lockdowns to curb the transmission of the pathogen. While the efficacy of such lockdown is debatable, several reports suggest that the reduced human activities provided an inadvertent benefit by briefly improving air and water quality. India observed a 68-days long, nation-wide, stringent lockdown between 24 March and 31 May 2020. Here, we delineate the impact of the lockdown on groundwater and river sourced drinking water sustainability in the arsenic polluted Ganges river basin of India, which is regarded as one of the largest and most polluted river basins in the world. Using groundwater arsenic measurements from drinking water wells and water quality data from river monitoring stations, we have studied ~700 km stretches of the middle and lower reaches of the As (arsenic)-polluted parts of the river for pre-lockdown (January-March 2020), syn-lockdown (April-May), and post-lockdown periods (June-July). We provide the extent of As pollution-free groundwater vis-à-vis river water and examine alleviation from lockdown as an opportunity for sustainable drinking water sources. The overall decrease of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentrations and increase of pH suggests a general improvement in Ganges water quality during the lockdown in contrast to pre-and-post lockdown periods, potentially caused by reduced effluent. We also demonstrate that land use (agricultural/industrial) and land cover (urban-periurban/rural) in the vicinity of the river reaches seems to have a strong influence on river pollutants. The observations provide a cautious optimistic scenario for potentially developing sustainable drinking water sources in the arsenic-affected Ganges river basin in the future by using these observations as the basis of proper scientifically prudent, spatially adaptive strategies, and technological interventions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown