Comparative index for water pollution by rural and urban means

Abstract

Over past few decades water pollution has become an issue of worldwide major concern. Availability of fresh water is decreasing gradually as water resource being limited and unevenly spread throughout the globe. Water pollution assessment and development of new and effective waste water treatment methods has become new a line of wide scope in scientific world. Meanwhile, with reference to past studies, we are well aware about the urban pollution that our crowded cities cause by dumping human excreta, household and industrial waste into river bodies but a question arise what is the contribution of rural area and agricultural activities in contaminating river bodies? And is the level of pollution due to agricultural and rural activities is significant with respect to urban pollution? Here we need to take account of biological processes such as bio-magnification and accelerated eutrophication that is caused by direct discharge of agricultural water containing chemical fertilizers and plant growth boosters during irrigation of agricultural field. A study has been conducted by us that involved, collecting water samples of river Rispana and river Bindal from area where agricultural activities are conducted and from areas of crowded city. We ran test like pH, pOH, conductivity, hardness, total dissolved salts, biochemical oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand to estimate quality of water samples and results were compared as rural vs. urban pollution index.