Title
Arsenic, manganese and aluminum contamination in groundwater resources of Western Amazonia (Peru)
Date Issued
31 December 2017
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
This paper presents a first integrated survey on the occurrence and distribution of geogenic contaminants in groundwater resources of Western Amazonia in Peru. An increasing number of groundwater wells have been constructed for drinking water purposes in the last decades; however, the chemical quality of the groundwater resources in the Amazon region is poorly studied. We collected groundwater from the regions of Iquitos and Pucallpa to analyze the hydrochemical characteristics, including trace elements. The source aquifer of each well was determined by interpretation of the available geological information, which identified four different aquifer types with distinct hydrochemical properties. The majority of the wells in two of the aquifer types tap groundwater enriched in aluminum, arsenic, or manganese at levels harmful to human health. Holocene alluvial aquifers along the main Amazon tributaries with anoxic, near pH-neutral groundwater contained high concentrations of arsenic (up to 700 μg/L) and manganese (up to 4 mg/L). Around Iquitos, the acidic groundwater (4.2 ≤ pH ≤ 5.5) from unconfined aquifers composed of pure sand had dissolved aluminum concentrations of up to 3.3 mg/L. Groundwater from older or deeper aquifers generally was of good chemical quality. The high concentrations of toxic elements highlight the urgent need to assess the groundwater quality throughout Western Amazonia.
Start page
1437
End page
1450
Volume
607-608
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Oceanografía, Hidrología, Recursos hídricos
Ciencias del medio ambiente
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85025690816
PubMed ID
Source
Science of the Total Environment
ISSN of the container
00489697
Sponsor(s)
We are very thankful to the DESA in Loreto and in Ucayali and the ETRAS-section of PAHO in Lima for assistance during field work, and to all well-owners for giving us permission to sample. We are grateful to the AuA laboratory and Numa Pfenninger at Eawag for elemental analysis, to Lenny Winkel, Joel Podgorski and Anja Bretzler for manuscript feedback, and to Fredy Jaimes from INGEMMET (Lima, Peru) for discussion about regional geology and access to unpublished documentation. The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript. This project benefited from financial support through a 2015 Seed Money Grant for Latin America - Swiss Bilateral Program, from CODEV-EPFL (SM-LA 21) and Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Grant (no 165913).
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus