Water pollution – The KGP Chronicle

Studying Plastic Pollution in the Ganga with National Geographic

Ganga, the life source of Northern and Eastern India is a prominent area of study by researchers from diverse disciplines, a key among them is the environment. In 2019, the National Geographic Society organized the expedition “Sea to Source: Ganges” to scientifically document plastic waste in the Ganges watershed and support holistic and inclusive solutions. A proud partner in this women scientists-led expedition was IIT Kharagpur along with the Isabela Foundation, University of Dhaka, the Wildlife Institute of India, and Wild Team Bangladesh.

Researchers and students from an environment-focused group at the Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT Kharagpur participated in this transboundary expedition. The group was involved in estimating the mismanaged plastic quantities from municipal solid waste all along the river in India and come up with potential solutions and improvements in waste management systems to avoid the leakages of plastic waste from land to the river.

Talking about their role in the study-based expedition, Prof. Brajesh Dubey who heads this group at IIT Kharagpur said, “We carried out the waste characterization from the city/town dumpsite waste samples, as well as the samples collected along the river from Rishikesh to Howrah. It helped in estimating the extent of mismanaged plastics in the waste, the type of plastics present in the waste and the estimation of the fraction of mismanaged waste plastics getting into the river Ganga. A model is also being developed using the field data to have a realistic estimation of the plastic pollution transport from land to river and eventually to the ocean.”

The IIT research group also performed a photographic survey of waste management practices and issues for each city/town. Further, they held and discussions with city officials on waste management plans, identification of infrastructure gaps for the city/town and suggestions for improvement in the implementation of the solutions for better plastic waste management. The solutions proposed include the proper waste collection in segregation mode, capacity building in terms of infrastructure development as well as skill improvement of manpower involved in waste management practices at ULB levels. The research group is in touch with several ULBs for the improvement of their waste management infrastructure.

While the expedition was carried out from May to December 2019, the study was carried out till February 2021. The report has been recently made public by the National Geographic Society on their blog. Read More

Photo by Sara Hylton.

Times of India

AI to Detect How Safe is Your Drinking Water

Researchers from IIT Kharagpur have developed an AI-based prediction model for detecting Arsenic pollution in drinking water

Arsenic has been a menace in Eastern India especially along the banks of the Ganga for almost two decades now, putting millions of people at severe health risk. Researchers have been studying the distribution patterns of the contaminated groundwater for years to develop a large-scale ecological and environmental framework addressing this challenge in the region. For the first time, a breakthrough has been achieved. A group of researchers from IIT Kharagpur has successfully predicted the distribution of groundwater arsenic and human health risk in the affected areas using AI algorithms on environmental and geological and human usage parameters.

The researchers have delineated the high and low arsenic zones across the entire delta using artificial intelligence and quantify the number of people exposed. This study has led to the development of probabilistic models of arsenic occurrence, exposure and human health risk assessment within the delta region. The model shows a strong association of ‘surficial aquitard thickness’ and ‘groundwater-fed irrigation’ to regional-scale As-hazard.

Among the worst affected zones are the districts of Nadia (93%) and Murshidabad (82%). The study has been recently published in the international journal Science of The Total Environment. [Download Paper]

“Our AI models predict the occurrence of high arsenic in groundwater across more than half of the Ganges River delta, covering more than 25% area extent in each of the 19 out of 25 administrative zones in West Bengal. A total of 30.3 million people are estimated to be exposed to severely high As-hazard within the Ganges river delta,” said lead author Madhumita Chakraborty at IIT Kharagpur’s Dept. of Geology and Geophysics.

While the predictive model framework would prove to be vital typically for the identification of drinking water sources in arsenic affected areas of West Bengal, it can be used in other parts of the country, which are also suffering from severe groundwater pollutants, said the researchers.

“Eventually, all this information forms the baseline knowledge for the recently initiated Jal Jeevan Mission of the Government of India. The mission is based on providing safe drinking water to every household of the country within 2024 and the outcome of this provides the information for the location of safe groundwater, which is the primary source of drinking water for most of India,” opined Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee from the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics who is leading the research.

It is to be noted that Eastern India and Bangladesh, which source more than 80% of its drinking water from groundwater sources, are coping with this issue of naturally-sourced arsenic mass poisoning. The studies conducted until now were unable to offer an effective model for policy decisions due to the delineation of the local extent and geochemical mechanisms for arsenic pollution.

The researchers from IIT Kharagpur thus opted for AI which is now being used across the world to successfully model the distribution of groundwater contaminants.

“Such successful use of artificial intelligence in geoscience enables us to find answers and build prima-facie understanding before further detailed field-based investigation or validation. However, such regional-scale models do not completely eliminate the need for field investigation in many cases; especially for groundwater contaminants like arsenic which is known to exhibit well-to-well variability in concentration,” added Prof. Mukherjee.

Citation: Chakraborty et al. (2020). Modeling regional-scale groundwater arsenic hazard in the transboundary Ganges River Delta, India and Bangladesh: Infusing physically-based model with machine learning. Science of The Total Environment. Volume 748, 15 December 2020, 141107 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141107]

Media Coverage:

Economic Times (CIO)	Hindustan Times	News 18
Jagran Josh	Edex Live	New Indian Express
Outlook	The Week	ABP Education
NDTV		Tribune

Research Information: Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee, abhijit@gg.iitkgp.ac.in

Institute Information: Prof. B N Singh, Registrar, registrar@hijli.iitkgp.ac.in

Media Outreach: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in; media@iitkgp.ac.in

Stronger Economy, Cleaner Waters

Business Standard The New Indian Express NDTV

A study by IIT Kharagpur researchers has connected the dots between the impact of economic growth reducing fecal coliform (FC) pathogens in groundwater which is a key factor causing water-borne diseases in the densely populated Indo-Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin.

About 100,000 children in India are dying every year from waterborne enteric diseases like diarrhea. While the study reported the excess of fecal coliform concentration in potable groundwater in rural regions in the said area, it also made first-time observations on a significant reduction of fecal pathogen concentration in the spatially variable groundwater from 2002 to 2017.

“Looking beyond the country globally, more than 2 billion people, mostly living in economically stressed areas of Africa and South Asia still do not have access to basic sanitation, and more than 1 billion still opt for open defecation. The resulting unsafe disposal of faecal waste to nearby drinking water sources poses an extremely serious environmental crisis and public health concern,” says Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee, faculty at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering and Dept. of Geology and Geophysics at IIT Kharagpur who led the research project.

The researchers studied data for the densely populated Indo-Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin, across 234 districts in Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Assam and also Delhi and NCR and a population of ~ 400 million. The study data collected from National Rural Drinking Water Programme, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Govt. of India, covered almost last three decades to delineate the long-term improvement trends of groundwater quality across India, as a consequence of the development.

Figures suggesting the a) trends of decrease in faecal coliform in groundwater between 2002-2017 with the study area of Indus Ganges Brahmaputra basin (Rajasthan, NCR, UP, MP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Assam), b and c) comparison trends of anomalies between groundwater quality and economic development (observed as satellite-observed night-time light), d) changes in economic development across study area, as observed from night-time light

Uniqueness in this study to determine economic development trends and correlations was the use of nigh-time light data instead of GDP or other economic growth data. “We have used satellite-based Night-time Light information based on Defence Meteorological Satellite Program of the US Air Force, archived by NOAA/NASA for the period 1992-2013. In most areas economic development, suggested by increasing satellite-based nightlight correlated to the reduction in fecal coliform concentration and alleviation of water quality,” explained Srimanti Duttagupta, a Ph.D. scholar at IIT Kharagpur, first author of the research paper which has come out recently based on this study.

The other dataset used was high-resolution geographically spatial information of waterborne fecal pathogen concentration in groundwater from the period 2002-2017. Numerical and statistical analyses were performed on aforesaid culled datasets to understand the efficiency of development in alleviating the water quality and public health, and relationship with economic development. The study showed that the spatially variable groundwater faecal pathogen concentration from 2002-2017 has significantly decreased across the basin. From 2002 – 2013, Night-time Light on the surface area as seen from satellites increased by +3.05% per year and faecal coliform pollution decreased -1.39% per year.

The research group observed a significant decrease in groundwater fecal coliform concentration after 2014, in the acquired data. This could be a direct outcome of improved sanitation construction and utilization of sanitation structures, instituted by the Clean India (Swatch Bharat) mission of the Government of India Prof. Mukherjee remarked, however, needs more data to confirm. “Nevertheless, in areas with inferior water quality, improper human practices outweigh economic development in affecting human health,” he added.

It was observed that areas with lower literacy rate and very high population density suffer from poor groundwater quality because of faecal coliform pollution, irrespective of economic development. The problem of overpopulation and slums is an intricate problem which is reflected in all life aspects in countries like India. The study reflects through results that higher faecal coliform concentration in urban, and peri-urban areas, suggesting economic progress may not be the only influencing factor on water quality alleviation.

The researchers opined that social behavior and practices, use and disuse and beliefs are mostly related to lower literacy rate. In turn, these results lack awareness and encourage malpractice on sanitation, eventually leading to increased fecal waste into drinking water sourced to groundwater.

The research was published this year in the Journal of Earth System Science published by Indian Academy of Sciences.

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