PHYSICOCHEMICAL AND MICROBIOLOGICAL QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF DRINKING WATER FROM COMMERCIAL SUPPLIERS AT SELECTED LOCATIONS IN DHAKA, BANGLADESH

Preyanka Dey, Farhana Chowdhury

Abstract: With the increase of population in the capital city, Dhaka of Bangladesh, it is becoming a challenge day by day to supply safe, sufficient and fit drinking water to its population. In the recent years though a few water treatment plants are trying to supply drinking water after treating surface water from the rivers flowing around Dhaka city, ground water extraction using deep tube wells remains the main drinking water supply source to provide water for the city’s people. However, with the concern of different health related issues, it has become necessary to assess the quality of water feed by the city’s mass population supplied by different commercial suppliers at different places around the city. Physicochemical and microbiological property parameters of drinking water supplied by five different commercial suppliers at five selected locations in Dhaka city are assessed in this research to investigate the quality of water consumed by people at the sampling sites. Some physicochemical parameters like hardness and iron concentration were very much below the Bangladeshi recommended limits compared to other parameters in most of the collected water samples. This may impart nutrition deficiencies and related diseases to the long time consumer in this area. Other than this, presence of alarming level of total and fecal coliform bacteria in the water samples indicates the poor hygienic condition for which water borne diseases has become a regular scenario at these sites. Lack of strict implementation and monitoring of rules and regulations to maintain the prescribed standard of drinking water supplied by the different companies was also another critical issue that has made the scenario worse.

Keywords: Drinking Water Quality, Fecal Coliform, Total Coliform, Hardness, and Iron

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2017.0601028