Assessment of drinking water quality and various household water treatment practices in rural areas of Northern India

Groundwater is an essential freshwater resource and contributes about two-thirds of the world’s freshwater reserves. Groundwater contamination can occur due to faulty construction or leakage in pipes and somehow through surface contaminants like a human or animal fecal matter or other foreign substances. The present study was conducted to assess the physicochemical as well as the bacteriological quality of groundwater in the rural areas of the Kurukshetra district, northern India. The samples were collected and analyzed for various physicochemical (pH, EC, TDS, Cl, TH, Ca, and Mg) and the bacteriological [total coliforms (TC) and fecal coliforms (FC)] parameters. The samples were then treated and re-analyzed after applying various household practices like boiling, solar disinfection or SODIS, chlorination, and reverse osmosis (RO) technique. After treatment, the trend obtained from the analysis for removing bacteriological contaminants follows as RO ≈ boiling > chlorination ≈ SODIS. It indicates that RO followed by boiling is the best method for drinking water treatment at home which removes most of the microbes as well as EC and TDS to a large extent. However, chlorination and SODIS methods are also effective in removing contaminants.