{"title":"Drinking Water Quality in Delta and Non-Delta Counties along the Mississippi River","authors":"Emily V. Pickering, Chunrong Jia, Abu Mohd Naser","doi":"10.3390/w16182622","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The Mississippi Delta region has worse population health outcomes, including higher overall cardiovascular and infant mortality rates. Water quality has yet to be considered as a factor in these health disparities. The objective of this paper is to determine overall differences in basic water quality indicators, electrolytes of cardiovascular importance, trace elements, heavy metals, and radioactive ions of groundwater in delta and non-delta counties in states along the Mississippi River. Data were sourced from the major-ions dataset of the U.S. Geological Survey. We used the Wilcoxon rank sum test to determine the difference in water quality parameters. Overall, delta counties had lower total dissolved solids (TDS) (47 and 384 mg/L, p-value < 0.001), calcium (7 and 58 mg/L; p-value < 0.001), magnesium (2 and 22 mg/L; p-value < 0.001), and potassium (1.57 and 1.80 mg/L; p-value < 0.001) and higher sodium (38 mg/L and 22 mg/L; p-value < 0.001) compared to non-delta counties. Overall, there were no statistical differences in trace elements, heavy metals, and radioactive ions across delta versus non-delta counties. These results underscore the need for further epidemiological studies to understand if worse health outcomes in delta counties could be partially explained by these parameters.","PeriodicalId":23788,"journal":{"name":"Water","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Water","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/w16182622","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The Mississippi Delta region has worse population health outcomes, including higher overall cardiovascular and infant mortality rates. Water quality has yet to be considered as a factor in these health disparities. The objective of this paper is to determine overall differences in basic water quality indicators, electrolytes of cardiovascular importance, trace elements, heavy metals, and radioactive ions of groundwater in delta and non-delta counties in states along the Mississippi River. Data were sourced from the major-ions dataset of the U.S. Geological Survey. We used the Wilcoxon rank sum test to determine the difference in water quality parameters. Overall, delta counties had lower total dissolved solids (TDS) (47 and 384 mg/L, p-value < 0.001), calcium (7 and 58 mg/L; p-value < 0.001), magnesium (2 and 22 mg/L; p-value < 0.001), and potassium (1.57 and 1.80 mg/L; p-value < 0.001) and higher sodium (38 mg/L and 22 mg/L; p-value < 0.001) compared to non-delta counties. Overall, there were no statistical differences in trace elements, heavy metals, and radioactive ions across delta versus non-delta counties. These results underscore the need for further epidemiological studies to understand if worse health outcomes in delta counties could be partially explained by these parameters.
期刊介绍:
Water (ISSN 2073-4441) is an international and cross-disciplinary scholarly journal covering all aspects of water including water science and technology, and the hydrology, ecology and management of water resources. It publishes regular research papers, critical reviews and short communications, and there is no restriction on the length of the papers. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical research in as much detail as possible. Full experimental and/or methodical details must be provided for research articles. Computed data or files regarding the full details of the experimental procedure, if unable to be published in a normal way, can be deposited as supplementary material.