Effect of Household Water Treatment on the Concentration of Heavy Metals of Drinking Water in Ahvaz City

Background: Some metals play an important role in  biological reactions  and metabolism of human body. Low and high concentrations of these elements can cause diseases and poisoning. This study was carried out in order to investigate the concentration of metals in inlet and outlet water of households in Ahvaz city, Iran in 2018. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study. Water samples were taken from four different residential areas of Ahvaz city and finally 24 samples of inlet water and 24 samples of outlet water were tested. Experiments were performed with three replications. Heavy metals were measured by inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy and combined with mass spectrometry. In order to determine the amount of the mentioned heavy metals, ICP-OES (Varian 710-ES) was used . Results: The highest concentration belonged to calcium (146.39 mg/L) and the lowest concentration belonged to cobalt (0.001 mg/L). The concentration pattern of heavy metals in the inlet and outlet water of the purification devices was as follows: calcium> sodium> magnesium> potassium> iron> zinc> manganese> chromium= cobalt. The values of calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc, iron,manganese, copper, cobalt and chromium in the water outlet water were less than the obtained values in the input water. Conclusion: Concentrations of heavy metals calcium, potassium, magnesium, sodium, zinc, iron, manganese, copper, cobalt and chromium in the inlet and outlet of domestic water purifiers were lower than the national standard of Iran, the World Health Organization and the US Environmental Protection Agency. According to the results, home water purifiers reduce heavy metals.