Alterations in Physicochemical Characteristics of DrinkingWater Collected From Some Areas of Ahmedabad City

Due to urbanization and human activities, the groundwater sources are depleting in terms of quantity and quality in Indian cities. The present study is associated with tap water quality of municipal and tube well sources evaluated from 36 samples collected from17 areas of Ahmedabad city. Samples were analysed for various physicochemical characteristics by standard methods. The data suggest that most of the samples have total hardness, chlorinity and salinitywithin the highest desirable limit of GPCB or BIS. Most of the samples have high amount of calcium and magnesium hardness above the highest desirable limit but less than maximumpermissible limit. Five samples were having magnesium hardness even above the maximum permissible limit of GPCB standards. The water quality index (WQI) calculated from five parameters has shown that almost all the samples have the index valuemore than 100 suggesting that drinking water is unsafe. Most of thewater samples studied (75%) were hard waters in terms of total hardness. Pearson correlation matrix suggests that total hardness has highly significant positivecorrelation with rest of the parameters studied.The calciumhardness has significant correlationwith chlorinity and salinity. Themagnesiumhardness showed a positive correlation with chlorinity and salinity. Compared tomunicipal sources using Student's t-test analysis, the tube-well source has higher values of total hardness (P<0.001), magnesiumhardness (P<0.001), chlorinity (P<0.05) and salinity (P<0.05). Proper water treatment, especially for tube well water is necessary.