Christian Ebere Enyoh, Andrew Wirnkor Verla and Ngozi Jane Egejuru
Inhabitants of Orji are still pending on borehole water for drinking water without any treatment. The storage of this water in household containers for a long time as well as the handling might lead to a quality deteriorated and become unsuitable for human consumption. The study therefore evaluated the effect of long storage on pH values as well as determined the total concentrations of Ni, Cd, Cu, Pb and Fe in 10 borehole water samples from Orji. The pH was determined using Jenway 3510 pH meter while Perkins Elmer Analyst Atomic Absorption Spectrophometer was used for heavy metals determination after acid digestion. The results obtained were compared to National Agency for Food Drugs and Control (NAFDAC) and Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) standard and were chemometrically assessed. The mean concentrations of the studied metals were below standard. pH continually increased with storage but did not exceed the standard range of (6.3/6.5-8.5) set by SON/NAFDAC over 12 weeks. Chemometric assessment such as linear regression analysis revealed positive association between pH values and metal concentration. The association were in the order of significant pH/Fe (0.202)>pH/Cd (0.169)>pH/Ni (0.161)>pH/Pb (0.123) respectively. Spearman’s correlation revealed similar source(s) of contamination of the studied metals except for Fe. Coefficient of Variation (CV) showed low variability (<20). Contamination Factor (CF) showed low contamination (<1), except for Cadmium which showed moderate to considerable contamination. Pollution Load Index (PLI) showed no pollution (<1) while mean WQI revealed “poor quality water” with WQI of 100.5 based on the studied metals. Therefore, precaution should be taken when consuming stored borehole water from Orji.
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