A Student-Centric Research and Education Programme on Heavy Metal Pollution of Water Bodies from Selected Indian Cities

A research and education programme on environmental chemistry has been initiated to train a few selected undergraduate students so that they can take up environment-related issues and challenges for longterm sustainability of the ecosystem. The main goal of this programme is to instill 'responsible citizenship behaviour' in them in order to carry forward the huge task of environmental protection through research activities and community awareness programmes. Here we report spectrophotometer-based estimation of hexavalent chromium (9.5-337 μg l^-1), lead (20-158 μg l^-1), cadmium (from below detection limit to 34 μg l^-1) and nickel (from below detection limit to 19 μg l^-1) concentrations in different rivers, surface and groundwater bodies collected from selected cities of India. Our results indicate that with the exception of nickel, majority of the studied water bodies and aquifers are contaminated to variable degrees with the analysed dissolved heavy metals. In view of low geochemical baseline values for chromium, cadmium and lead, the origin of heavy metal pollution is inferred to be anthropogenic, mainly originating from industrial activities and indiscriminate dumping of waste material. The toxicological data are integrated with published health data and it is found that the heavy metalpolluted water bodies pose serious threat to the human population and the ecosystem. At certain sites, we suggest that remediation measures need to be taken up immediately. We also briefly highlight the novelty of this student-centric research programme.