LEAD AS A TOXIC WATER CONTAMINANT – HEALTH EFFECTS AND METHODS OF ANALYSIS

Lead is heavy metal and toxic pollutants and it creates a health problem in both human and animals. Lead comes in drinking-water due to used in plumbing, fittings, solder, pipes, tetraethyl and tetramethyl used as antiknnocking in petrol, food processing industries, herbal remedies etc. Children’s and pregnant women’s are mostly affected due to small concentration of lead in the body. Children’s are affected due to exposure of lead in soils and household dust. Young children absorb 4–5 times as much lead as adults. Infants can absorb 50 % of lead through GI tract and men can absorb 10 -15 %; from food, water, dust or soil. Lead is accumulative in various body organs. It affects the central and peripheral nervous system. Various acute disease symptoms are occurs in human body at the blood lead levels of 100– 120 μg/dl in adults and 80–100 μg/dl in children.It is essential to analyse the water for its lead content time to time. WHO has given a guideline value for lead is 0.01 mg/lit. There are various analytical methods reported for the detection of lead such as, atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS), inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS), electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ETAAS) and the inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry (ICP).