Emerging pollutants (EMPs) are now found in water bodies and their presence is of great concern globally. EMPs originate from natural as well as synthetic sources. They comprise pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP), soap, hormones, chemical from industries, pesticides, leaks from used information technology gadgets among others. In monitoring water quality, the most authorities have not been measuring these EMPs despite their greatest danger on human health. Indeed, the first water quality index did not capture these EMPs in their equations. EMPs have now been found in most surface and ground-waters in different countries. They reach these water bodies through the surface runoff, effluent from wastewater treatment plants, leakage from sewer lines, septic tank leakage and leachate from landfills. This is because the most of our treatment plants are not designed to treat EMPs which end up short circuiting the system because the pollutants are hydrophilic, with partial degradation, and persistency. If ingested into the biosphere, the EMPs can lead to disruption of our blood cells and antibiotic resistance among other challenges. Little information is documented on the levels of these EMPs in the world. Since they occur in very minute amounts, their measurements cannot be achieved by local tools normally used for other parameters and nowadays people use 2-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to high resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC-HRTOFNS) to detect them. One of the EMPs called Bisphenol A is found in 62% of water sampled in South Africa ( Wanda et al., 2017 ).
Published in Chapter:
Commonly Used Methods to Calculate Water Quality Indices
Clement Kiptum (University of Eldoret, Kenya)
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-7356-3.ch012
Abstract
Water supplied to communities should be of acceptable level in terms of quality. Water quality can be assessed by the use of the water quality index (WQI). The use of indices is crucial in this era where water quality issues have raised health as well as legal concerns, both at local, national, and international levels. Water samples have to be collected, tested, and values for water quality index determined. It was initially proposed by Horton in 1965. There are several ways to calculate WQI, and this chapter gives formulae for different methods. Water quality indices differ from country to country. Some indices use three, six parameters, or even more than six parameters. Earlier methods to calculate the water quality indices did not capture microbial parameters, hence the reason for various methods. A recent method of calculating a WQI is based on fuzzy logic. Therefore, this chapter looks at the methods from all continents.