Water is an important constituent for survival after oxygen. Internationally, hazardous
drinking water passing through poor hygiene kills almost 1.6 million children below the age of
five annually. Various physical parameters that represent the quality of drinking water should be
in safe limit. Heavy metals such as lead (Pb), Arsenic (As), Nickel (Ni), copper (Cu) and
chromium (Cr) have adverse effects on humans. Drinking water should not contain any
pathogenic organism or any bacteria indicating bacterial contamination. Presence of coliforms in
water is considered as bacterial contamination. In this study three filtration plants were selected
randomly from each town three samples of tap water and filtered water were taken after 15 days
respectively. Overall 162 samples were collected for the study. Parameters that were used to
determine the physical characteristics of water were Color, total Hardness as CACO3, Total
Dissolved Solids (TDS) and pH. Chemical characteristics included detection of Arsenic,
Calcium, Chloride, Chromium, Copper. Toxic inorganics included Lead, Manganese, Nickel,
Selenium and Zinc were analyzed. Microbiological quality of water was examined in terms of
Escherichia coli (must not be detectable in any 100 ml sample) and total coliforms (Must not be
detectable in any 100 ml sample). The results observed are as follows: pH of tap water ranged
from 5.56 to 8.49 in tap water while that of filtered water ranged from 7.46 to 8.37, TDS in tap
water varied from 52 mg/L to 1025.3 mg/L while that in filtered water was 217.91 mg/L to
1098.6 mg/L, chlorides in tap water ranged from 47.5 meq/L to 592.8 meq/L while that in
filtered water were from 41.5 meq/L to 520.6 meq/L, Hardness of tap water samples varied from
20.1 mg/L to 260 mg/L while that of filtered water samples were from 40.4 mg/L to 290.9 mg/L,
calcium (Ca) in tap water ranged from 17.8 mg/L to 48.3 mg/L while that in filtered water was
Summary
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14.7 mg/L to 51 mg/L, Manganese (Mn) in tap water ranged from 0.01 mg/L to 0.19 mg/L while
in filtered water it ranged from 0.01 mg/L to 0.13 mg/L, Zinc (Zn) in tap water samples varied
from 0.01 mg/L to 0.25 mg/L while in filtered water samples it went from 0.01 mg/L to 0.09
mg/L, Arsenic (As) ranged from 0 to 0.05 mg/L in tap water while in filtered water it went from
0 to 0.023 mg/L, Lead (Pb) in tap water ranged from 0 to 0.06 mg/L while in filtered water it
ranged from 0 to 0.01 mg/L, Chromium (Cr) in tap water varied from 0 to 0.6 mg/L while in
filtered water it went from 0 to 0.2 mg/L while Copper (Cu), Selenium (Se) and Nickel (Ni) were
not detected in tap water samples as well as in filtered water samples. 3.7% coliforms were
present in filtered water samples while tap water had 7.4% of total coliforms. 22.2 % E. coli were
present in filtered water samples while 40.7% E. coli were present in tap water samples.