Bengaluru: The water you drink every day may look pure and fresh but it may not be as healthy as you think it is. With the city’s expansion water bodies and groundwater are becoming increasingly polluted with 13.14% of the samples tested in the city having a high level of Total Dissolvable Solids (TDS) while a staggering 24.03% samples showed a higher level of hardness.
This became evident from research conducted by a private water filtration company, BRITA, which tested water samples from across 1,423 homes, The situation across the state is no better with the Central Ground Water Board and Ground Water Directorate, Karnataka reporting last year that water in over 14 districts of the state had a high content of fluoride.
It has also come out in the research that of the water that had high levels of TDS, 61% was borewell and 17%, corporation water. According to permissible standards, the hardness of water has to be less than 200 mg/l but amongst the samples that were taken for testing, it was found that 49% of the samples were from borewells while 26% samples were from corporation water.
Indian Institute of Science (IISC) research on groundwater quality also proved the presence of heavy metals including arsenic. “The study across more than 1400 households spread around Bengaluru city suggests that there are certain areas that have very high TDS and hardness in water making it unfit to consume, as high levels of TDS and hardness may indicate an excess of dissolved solids which can be detrimental to health with the water tasting bad as well,” said Hartmut Wolf, MD, BRITA India, He however added that the quality of water is dependent on the source and one cannot make a general assumption.
Banaswadi, Jakkur, Jalahalli East, Ramammurthy Nagar, KR Puram, Kaggadaspura(CV Raman Nagar), Peenya Area(Raghavendra Nagar),Whitefield(Gandhi Puram), Rajarajeswari Nagar(BEML layout), Banashankari 5th stage(BDA layout) and Hegde Nagar were some of the areas where the TDS was found to above the permissible limit.
