earticle

영어

The natural spring (dhara) is the main source of drinking water in North Sikkim. Though it is pure water for drinking and other domestic purposes, it gets polluted with various environmental factors. The study was performed to assess the quality of spring water. A total of nine sampling sites were selected at an interval of four months, i.e. monsoon, pre-monsoon and post-monsoon during August 2015-July2016. All the spring water samples were analyzed in terms of physical properties, heavy metals like copper, lead, iron, chromium, cadmium and bacterial characteristics such as Escherichia coli, Klebsiella sp, Salmonella sp, Shigella sp, Proteus sp, Citrobacter sp, Enterobacterclocae etc. In the study all the observed results were compared with Bureau of Indian Standard. All the results of physical parameters and heavy metals were found within the permissible limit except the range of pH and iron shows slightly higher concentration than permissible limit. During monsoon, isolation of organisms was recorded in significant percentage followed by post-monsoon and pre-monsoon.