Determination of quality of water used by students of College of Education, Katsina-Ala through physical and electro-chemical parameters

Abstract

The aim of this work was to determine the quality of water used by students of College of Education, Katsina-Ala by measuring the parameters: temperature, colour, taste, pH, electrical conductivity (EC) and total dissolved solids (TDS). Five water samples from sources namely borehole, tap, hand-dug well, rain and river were checked using physical and electro-chemical methods. The results revealed that borehole water had the highest EC and TDS values of 382.30μS/cm and 256.14mg/l respectively. Whereas river water had the least EC and TDS values of 30.90μS/cm and 20.70mg/l respectively. Although these values fall within acceptable limits prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Nigerian Standard for Drinking Water Quality and, therefore safe, it is recommended that water sanitizers be regularly used in order to eliminate biological contaminants.