ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Water
Sec. Water and Human Health
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frwa.2025.1639708
This article is part of the Research TopicIndian Scenario on Exposure, Characterization and Health Risk Appraisal of Toxic Contaminants in GroundwaterView all articles
Hydrogeochemical characterisation and human health risk assessment of groundwater in Sultanpur District, Uttar Pradesh, India
Provisionally accepted
Chandra Bhushan1Ashish Pratap Patel2Vivek Kumar Pandey1Pavitra V. Kumar3Pankaj Kumar3
Ashwani Kumar Tiwari2*- 1Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University, Jaunpur, India
- 2Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
- 3Inter-University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi, India
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Groundwater resources are the primary source of different uses in the Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Hence, the present study aimed to assess the concentration of major and trace elements in the groundwater of the Sultanpur district to identify the major controlling factors of the chemical composition of groundwater and assess the quality of groundwater for drinking, domestic and irrigation uses. To achieve this goal, fifty-eight groundwater samples were collected from the district, and the chemistry of the groundwater was analysed. The results show that the district's groundwater was slightly alkaline in nature, with maximum EC and TDS values recorded as 1,373 µS/cm and 859 mg/L, respectively. The anionic chemistry of groundwater was dominated by bicarbonate and sulphate, while sodium and calcium dominated the cationic chemistry. The hydrogeochemical approaches and multivariate statistical analysis suggest that the weathering of minerals and ion-exchange processes, with limited contributions from anthropogenic activities, controlled the chemical composition of the groundwater. The concentration of TDS, total hardness (TH), fluoride, manganese, and iron exceeded the recommended drinking water acceptable limit of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS 2012) at several locations. The water quality index (WQI) shows that the groundwater samples were suitable for drinking purposes, except at a few sampling locations. The hazard index (HI) shows that fifteen groundwater sampling locations were potentially risky to children, and seven locations have a potential risk to adults in the study area.Magnesium hazard (MH) is the most concerning parameter for irrigation usage.
Keywords: Hydrogeochemistry, statistical analysis, Water quality indices, Sources identification, GIS
Received: 02 Jun 2025; Accepted: 27 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bhushan, Patel, Pandey, Kumar, Kumar and Tiwari. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ashwani Kumar Tiwari, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
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