410146

Ground Water Quality Assessment of Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan: The Largest Slum Area of South Asia

Article

Last updated: 08 Feb 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Water

Abstract

This study focuses on assessing the hydrogeochemical characteristics of groundwater of Orangi Town situated in the western district of Karachi and determining its quality through the Water Quality Index (WQI) method. To achieve this objective, a total of 20 groundwater samples were collected from different sites in Orangi Town. Sampling depth varied from 12 to 350 ft, and the age of wells spanned between 1-15 years. The groundwater quality revealed significant variations in various physicochemical parameters, presenting ranges as temperature (25.1-26.5 °C), pH (5.67-7.29), EC (1953.12-23125 μS/cm), TDS (1250-14800 ppm), turbidity (0.00-5.00 NTU), hardness (800-7800 mg/L), Mg2+ (6.1-1530 mg/L), Ca2+ (88-933 mg/L), K+ (11-46 mg/L), Na+ (300-3398 mg/L), SO42- (78-3293 mg/L), HCO3- (200-580 mg/L), NO3- (1.21-31.98 mg/L), Cl- (70-10779 mg/L). The results, compared with World Health Organization (WHO) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, revealed that except pH, all physicochemical parameters are exceeding the corresponding limits for drinking purposes. The calculated Water Quality Index (WQI) value (206.83) provides clear evidence that the groundwater in Orangi Town is unfit for drinking purpose. The Piper diagram illustrates that the dominant hadrochemical facies include chloride-type water, mixed calcium-magnesium-chloride, and sodium chloride types indicating that diverse sources are influencing groundwater chemistry.

DOI

10.21608/jesj.2025.339268.1101

Keywords

Groundwater, Quality, Water quality index, pollution

Authors

First Name

adnan

Last Name

khan

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

department of geology, university of Karachi

Email

adkhan@uok.edu.pk

City

Karachi

Orcid

-

Volume

37

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

52721

Issue Date

2025-01-01

Receive Date

2024-11-25

Publish Date

2025-01-01

Page Start

53

Page End

62

Print ISSN

2314-5579

Online ISSN

2682-3942

Link

https://jesj.journals.ekb.eg/article_410146.html

Detail API

http://journals.ekb.eg?_action=service&article_code=410146

Order

410,146

Type

High quality original papers

Type Code

1,869

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Journal of Environmental Studies

Publication Link

https://jesj.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Ground Water Quality Assessment of Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan: The Largest Slum Area of South Asia

Details

Type

Article

Created At

08 Feb 2025