Assessment of Heavy Metals in the Water Resources of Mirzapur, U.P., INDIA

Water is the basic requirement of the civilizations. Water is used in several ways like bathing, cooking and most important is for drinking. Water may be available either as ground water or surface water resource. Major groundwater resources in India are wells and hand pumps, while the surface water resources include the rivers, ponds, reservoirs, waterfalls etc. Due to rapid rate of development including industrialization, urbanization, intensive agriculture etc. different types of pollutants are reaching to the water resource. These pollutants may be solids or effluents. These pollutants include many types of metals and heavy metals also. These heavy metals reach into human body and cause several disorders. In this study samples have been collected from different types of waters resources of Mirzapur district and analyzed for the concentration of the heavy metals Zn, Cd and Pb, results indicate that concentration of all the three selected metals are higher in many samples of water throughout the district. Concentration of lead is higher than maximum concentration limit in almost all the samples, while cadmium and Zinc are also crossing this limit in many samples.