Health risk assessment of nitrate exposure in groundwater of rural areas of Gonabad and Bajestan, Iran

Prolonged exposure to excessive levels of nitrate through drinking water is a potential risk for human health. The current research reports the analytical results and associated health risk for water quality in term of nitrate in 39 groundwater samples during January 2018 in rural areas of Gonabad and Bajestan, Iran. Nitrate concentrations ranged from 1.8 to 82.2 and from 5.5 to 84.3 mg/L for Gonabad and Bajestan, respectively. In this work, the potential risk to human health was determined using the hazard quotient (HQ) for three age groups including adults, children and infants. Comparison of HQs among the 39 sampling sites showed that the rural areas in Bajestan had higher HQs than Gonabad. Among the studied groups, infants exposed to a higher risk than children and adults. The results also indicated that the health of individuals from nitrate exposure in most of the groundwater studied was not acceptable and most of the consumers were in danger from current nitrate concentrations. Therefore, there is an urgent need for enforcing effective plans to improve groundwater quality and to better manage and control probable nitrate contaminated sources.