The impact of uranium contamination in groundwater on human health: a toxicological risk assessment

ABSTRACT

All living beings are exposed to naturally occurring radionuclides. Uranium, a primordial radionuclide forms compounds that are water soluble and enter the human body through food and drinking water. This study conducted a health risk assessment to evaluate the potential dangers associated with consuming uranium through groundwater in the Mansa district of Punjab, India. The uranium concentration varied from 43.43 µg/L to 449.79 µg/L. The biokinetic model of uranium including hair compartment as excretion pathway is used to calculate uranium retention in different organs of the human body. The Pearson correlation and principal component analysis are used for assessing the correlation of uranium with TDS, salinity, conductivity and pH. The high correlation is observed between TDS and uranium. The hazard quotient is 17.42 and excess cancer risk is higher than the permissible limit of 10⁻⁴. Owing to the high uranium concentration in Mansa district, periodic monitoring is advised along with clinical investigation of the population.

KEYWORDS:

• Biokinetics of uranium
• correlation
• PCA
• LADD
• HQ

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Environment Monitoring and Assessment Lab, Dept. of Physics, Dr B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar for providing lab facilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Beant Kaur Guron: Carried out the experimental work in the field and laboratory, writing and editing of the manuscript, analysis of the data. Sunil Kalkal: Writing and editing of the manuscript, analysis of the data. Rohit Mehra: Writing and editing of the manuscript, analysis of the data.

Data availability statement

Data are available as supplementary material.

Ethics approval statement

This is an observational study for which no ethical approval is required.

Informed consent statement

Samples of human beings or animals were not used for this study, and hence, no consent statement is needed for this study.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03067319.2024.2337883.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was obtained for this study.