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Download Hi-Res ImageDownload to MS-PowerPointCite This:Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2021, 8, 4, 301-306
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A Time-Series Record during COVID-19 Lockdown Shows the High Resilience of Dissolved Heavy Metals in the Ganga River

  • Tanuj Shukla
    Tanuj Shukla
    Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, UP 208016, India
    More by Tanuj Shukla
  • , 
  • Indra S. Sen*
    Indra S. Sen
    Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, UP 208016, India
    *Email: [email protected]
    More by Indra S. Sen
    Orcidhttp://orcid.org/0000-0001-7302-2313
  • , 
  • Soumita Boral
    Soumita Boral
    Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, UP 208016, India
    More by Soumita Boral
  • , and 
  • Sanjeet Sharma
    Sanjeet Sharma
    Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, UP 208016, India
    More by Sanjeet Sharma
Cite this: Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2021, 8, 4, 301–306
Publication Date (Web):January 22, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00982
Copyright © 2021 American Chemical Society
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    Abstract

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    The world’s large rivers have been intensely studied to better understand the impact of climate change and direct human interventions on river water quality and quantity. Of particular importance is the extent to which industrial, domestic, and agricultural discharges are modifying the dissolved inorganic constituents (major elements, trace elements, nutrients, and heavy metals) of large river systems vis-à-vis water quality. The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown provides a rare opportunity to quantify the impact of restricted anthropogenic activities on the water chemistry resilience of large rivers. By analyzing the daily geochemical record of the Ganga River, we demonstrate that reduced industrial discharge during 51 days of mandated nationwide lockdown decreased the dissolved heavy metal concentrations by a minimum of 50%. In contrast, nitrate and phosphate inputs predominantly derived from agricultural runoff and domestic sewage maintained a chemical status quo as these sources were not impacted by the nationwide confinement or their residence time was longer than the characteristic time of the perturbation. We demonstrate the high resilience of dissolved heavy metals and conclude that industrial wastewater minimization programs will substantially improve heavy metal pollution of the Ganga River in a short time span of a few months.

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    The Supporting Information is available free of charge at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00982.

    • Detailed information about the measurement protocols of IC and QQQ-ICP-MS and quality assurance and quality control, map of the study area (Figure S1), temporal variability of major ions, trace elements, precipitation, and discharge (Figure S2), Ca/Na versus Mg/Na molar ratio and Ca/Na versus (1000 × Sr)/Na diagrams (Figure S3), Rb-, NO3–-, and PO42–-normalized SoG plotted against Rb-normalized SoA, their temporal variability, and comparison with pre-COVID-19 ratios (Figure S4), temporal trends of SoA and SoG normalized against Na and Cl (Figure S5), the effect of lockdown restrictions on the dissolved geogenic trace elements (Figure S6), time-series measurements of concentrations of dissolved major elements and trace elements, respectively (Tables S1 and S2), dissolved nitrate (NO3–) and phosphate (PO43–) concentrations (Table S3), correlation matrix of major ions and trace elements data (Table S4), and log(C) versus log(Q) relationship (Table S5) (PDF)

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    Cited By

    This article is cited by 21 publications.

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