Indian Journal of Science and Technology http://www.indjst.org Vol.1 No 7 (Dec. 2008) iSee category: Research article “Water quality in Kancheepuram” by Balakrishnan et al. Indian Society for Education and Environment Indian J.Sci.Technol. 1 Impact of dyeing industrial effluents on the groundwater quality in Kancheepuram (India) M. Balakrishnan 1ж , S. Arul Antony 2 , S. Gunasekaran 3 and R.K. Natarajan 4 1 Department of Physics, Presidency College, Chennai - 600 005, India. 2 Department of Chemistry, Presidency College, Chennai - 600 005. 3 Department of Physics, Pachaiyappa’s College, Chennai – 600 030. 4 Dept. of Science & Humanities, Dhanalakshmi College of Engineering, Chennai-601 301. ж mbkarunmathi_ro@yahoo.co.in Abstract: Dyeing and printing of textile being a traditional industry of Kancheepuram town, a good number of textile industries along with dyeing and printing clusters have come up in the area. The dyeing units in Kancheepuram municipality and the surrounding villages are under constant threat of ground water contamination with chemicals of dyes. The present study evaluates the groundwater quality in and around the Kancheepuram town of Tamil Nadu with reference to drinking and irrigation purposes. Twenty groundwater samples were collected from various parts of the dyeing industrial region and the samples were analysed with standard analytic methods. The concentrations of total dissolved solids (1138 to 2574 mg/L), chloride (216 to 847 mg/L), total hardness (225 to 760 mg/L), sulphate (64 to 536 mg/L), nitrate (up to 58 mg/L), iron (up to 2.3 mg/L) and lead (up to 0.281 mg/L) were found to be higher and exceeded the permissible limits of BIS and WHO standards. The user specific water quality indices (USWQI) of each groundwater sample were evaluated for both purposes. The USWQI of the groundwater samples varied from 85 to 30 for drinking purpose and 89 to 50 for irrigation purpose. The results show that, the groundwater quality in the present study area can be categorized under ‘good’ for irrigation purpose and ‘fair’ for drinking purpose. Access to safe drinking water supply is one of the basic needs of society and hence a comprehensive plan of action is sought to curb groundwater contamination in the studied region. Keywords: Dye, groundwater, water quality, drinking, irrigation, USWQI, Kancheepuram. Introduction Perhaps one of the industries under the strong radar of the environmental agencies is the dyeing units and the dyestuff industries as a whole. Next to food, the second basic need of man ‘cloth’ is supplied by processing of natural and synthetic fibers in the industries called textiles. India is the second largest producer of cotton yarn and silk and third largest producer of cotton and cellulose fiber in the world. Increased population and modernized civilization trend gave rise to blooming of textile sectors in India. An estimate shows that textiles account for 14% of India’s industrial production and around 27% of its export earnings (Ministry of Textiles, 2004). There are about 10,000 garment manufacturers and 2100 bleaching and dyeing industries in India. Majority are concentrated in the states of Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Gujarat. Many textile processing units in Tamil Nadu use a number of unclassified chemicals that are likely to be from the Red List Group which is said to be harmful and unhealthy (Ravikumar & Dutta, 1996). The processes followed in textile industries are spinning of fiber to yarn, sizing to improve stiffness, scouring and desizing to remove excess sizing materials, bleaching to remove pectin and wax from the yarn and fabric and colouring and printing to provide desired colour and design to the cloth. Dyeing is a combined process of bleaching and colouring, which generates voluminous quantities of wastewaters and in turn causes environmental degradation. The effluents consist of high concentrations of dye stuff, biochemical oxygen demand, total dissolved solids, sodium, chloride, sulphate, hardness, heavy metals and carcinogenic dye ingredients (Tchobanoglous & Burton, 1995). Over the last several years, water quality in urban locale and villages adjoining dyeing industrial areas has deteriorated owing to effluent inflow into land and water bodies. This is evident in some pockets in and surrounding Kancheepuram (PIP, 2005). Increasing human and livestock population as well as per capita consumption owing to urbanization compounded by industrial development has raised the pressure on water resources to unprecedented levels. As added complications, pollution and contamination of both surface and ground water resources by the dyeing units in and around Kancheepuram municipality are worrisome. Dhanya et al., (2005) have studied the impact of dyeing industrial effluent on the groundwater quality and soil micro organisms in Tirupur and found that the bore well water samples had higher values of all the parameters except nitrate. Earlier studies by Kesavan and Parameswari (2005) revealed that the groundwater sources in Kancheepuram are not suitable for drinking purpose without proper treatment. The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of dyeing industrial effluents on the quality of groundwater in and around the Kancheepuram town with reference to drinking and irrigation purposes.