EVALUATION OF THE SUITABILITY OF THE RIVER NIGER WATER FOR AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC PURPOSES IN PARTS OF KOGI STATE NIGERIA

1.1Background of the Study

The importance of River Niger in the daily life of the people living along the bank of the river through which the river flows and its health implications make it imperative that thorough quality examination be conducted on the water. It is possible that floods and other anthropogenic activities might have introduced many substances into the water body that may be harmful to the people and the aquatic life.

The economic, health and physical well being of the people are tied to the river which is the major source of their daily supply of water for drinking and household chores. The river serves as source of their livelihood as most of the people depend heavily on the water for fishing both for commercial and subsistence purposes. The river is also used for irrigation farming for vegetables and other crops mostly for commercial purposes. The river also serves as their means of transportation. The people and the farm produce are transported using boats and ferries across the river to the markets.

Drinking water is the basic need for the development of human civilization. Over many centuries people lived on the banks of rivers, streams and other water courses. They drank, washed and moved from place to place on these waters. Only during the last 200 years we have seen rapid developments in water treatment. Developments were more rapid during 20th century, due to rapid developments in the quality and quantity requirements and due to increase in population per capita needs and industrial development (Rao, 2006).

 

Infectious diseases are transmitted by microbes for which water acts as a carrier. The normal carriers of infectious diseases are:

1.Water used for drinking, bathing, washing vegetables and fruits.

 

2.Food stuffs in which microbes develop

 

3.By direct or indirect contact of infected with healthy ones.

 

4.By insect in which water plays a vital role (Rao, 2006).

 

The lack of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation measure lead to a number of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, salmonellosis and typhoid, and every year millions of lives are claimed in developing countries. Diarrhoea is the major cause of the death of more than two million people per year worldwide, mostly children under the age of five. It is a symptom of infection or the result of a combination of a variety of enteric pathogens (Anon, 2000).

Water borne pathogens infest around 250 million people each year resulting in 10 to 20 million deaths worldwide. In South Africa alone more than 7 million people (approximately 17% of the population) do not have access to potable water supply and nearly 21 million (54% of the population) lack basic sanitation (Dwaf, 1996). This highlights the potential of infection due to water borne pathogens.The evaluation of water supplies for coliform bacteria is important in determining the sanitary quality of drinking water. High level of coliform count indicates a contaminated source, inadequate treatment or post treatment deficiencies (Matthew et al., 1984). Many developing regions suffer from either chronic shortage of freshwater or the readily accessible water resources are heavily polluted (Lehloesa and Muyiwa, 2000). Microbiological health risks remain associated with many aspect of water use including drinking water in developing

countries (Horne and Bennison, 1987). It has been reported that drinking water supplies have a long history of association with a wide spectrum of microbial infection. Therefore, the primary goal of water quality management from a health perspective is to ensure that consumers are not exposed to doses of pathogens that are likely to cause disease. Protection of water sources and treatment of water supplies have greatly reduced the incidence of these diseases in developing countries (Sues, 1982).

One of the difficulties in evaluating the impact of drinking water supply on health is the lack of local demographic statistics, particularly in rural communities. Therefore, it is important to know the incidence of diseases occurring in rural areas due to polluted water. This will provide an opportunity to compare the incidence of water-borne disease between the communities that have drinking water and those that do not.

Detection and enumeration of indicator organisms is the basic microbiological technique used in water quality monitoring (APHA and AWWA,1984). The coliform group of bacteria can be defined as the principal indicators of purity of water for domestic, industrial and other uses.

Along the River Niger over 80% of the population in Nigeria rely on surface water as the main source of water (Madu et al., 2008). This relatively high percentage of the population that is without proper water supply service indicates that many of the people still utilize untreated surface water for domestic purpose. Most of these people are poor and rely on state intervention for improved water supply.In less industrialized areas, pollution from human settlements lacking appropriate sanitary infrastructure, partially treated or untreated waste water, leachates from refuse dumps and from land use activities such as agriculture are the major pollution sources of the surface water

(Sodhi,2005). Microbiological and the physical water quality indicators are therefore, the major parameters to be monitored in the rivers, dams or boreholes of catchments (Dwaf, 1996).

Heavy metals enter human bodies through food, drinking water and air. Heavy metals can find its way into a surface water source through industrial and consumer waste or even from acidic rain breaking down soils and releasing heavy metals into the streams, dams, lake and rivers (Sundaray et al., 2006). The concentrations of the inorganic constituents of underground water are primarily dependent on the elemental availability in the soil and rocks through which the ground water percolates (Freeze and Cherry, 1979).

A wide variety of metals in various forms can be found in water, some concentration occur naturally (background level), their presence being influenced by the soil or rock mineralogy while others can be introduced through man’s activity (Onianwa et al.,2001).

Many heavy metals (such as Fe, Mn, Cu, Cd, and Pb) occur in nature in ore deposit (Laws, 1981., Ezegbo, 1989). As trace elements some heavy metals (e.g copper, selenium and zinc) are essential to maintain the metabolic process of the body. However at higher concentration they can lead to poisoning. Heavy metals are dangerous because they tend to bioaccumulate, causing some health effect like cancers, bone defects; (Osteomalacia and Osteoporosis) in human and aquatic animals. They accumulate in fishes or other aquatic animals thus adding to the danger of eating fish that may have been exposed to high level of heavy metals in water (Venugopal et al., 2009).

Heavy metals are already present in the environment, all man needs to do is to modify their concentration and the ways in which they spread. The trends to reduce use of heavy metals should be encouraged. However two points deserved special attention, recycling and disposal.

Eliminating the use of heavy metals is often extremely expensive and the outcome uncertain. The spreading of sludge on land; this issue goes far beyond the single question of heavy metals.

Technique of “slurrry spray” and the recurrent food crisis demonstrate considerable reticence on the part of farmers. There is no simple conclusion as regards the transfer of heavy metal into plants (Adeyeye, 1996)Very low concentration of most metal are required for living organism in the environment, but in excess concentration heavy metals can be harmful; the potential adverse impact of heavy metals are diverse pollution of aquatic system by heavy metals, inhibit primary production, nitrogen fixation, the mineralization of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, alter decomposition and enzymes synthesis (Forstner & William, 1983; Rahman et al.,2012).

Apart from the sources or origin of heavy metals, the physico- chemical properties of water also affect the concentration of heavy metal in soils. Organic matter and pH are the most important parameters controlling the accumulation and availability of heavy metals in soil environments. It is then necessary to evaluate the relationship among these parameters and heavy metals accumulation in soil (Nyamangara & Mzezewa, 1999).

The origin of sediment heavy metals can be divided into point and non-point sources of pollution. Point sources of pollution come from specific identifiable sources such as pipe. Non- point sources includes municipals sewage treatment plants, overflow from combined sanitary and storm sewers, storm water facilities and waste discharge from industry. Point sources includes storm water, run off from hazardous water, run off from hazardous and solid wastes, run off from crop land, livestock pens, mining and manufacturing operations and storm sites and atmonspheric depositon (USEPA,1996).

 

Chronic low-level intakes of heavy metals have damaging effects on human beings and other animals, because metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and copper cause serious environmental hazards and are known to be exceptionally toxic (Tucker et al., 2003)

Recent studies have shown for instance that human activities have created ecological pressure on the natural habitat of fish and other marine organism overtime. There is an upsurge of interest in water pollution as a result of this deleterious effect (Olowu et al., 2009). Furthermore, factors such as high population growth accompanied by intensive urbanization, increase in industrial activities and higher exploitation of natural resources including cultivatable land have caused pollution increase. There had been a steady increase in discharge that reaches the aquatic environment from industries (Atta et al., 1997). In addition to direct depletion of oxygen, the deposition of large quantities of organic materials in the water produces inorganic nutrients such as ammonia, nitrate, and phosphorus. These enrich the water considerably and give rise to dense algae growth or bloom which can cause the wide daily fluctuation in dissolved oxygen content of water bodies. This increased productivity caused by excessive organic loads can cause a decline in water quality.

Sediments are normally the final pathway of both natural and anthropogenic components produced or derived to the environment. Sediment quality is a good indication of pollution in the water column, where it tends to concentrate the heavy metals and other organic pollutant (Saheed and Shaker, 2008).Sediments have been known to be the major repository of heavy metals in aquatic system. Bioaccumulation and magnification is capable of leading to toxic level of these metals in fish even when the exposure is low (Olowu et al., 2009) .The presence of metal pollutant in fresh

water is known to disturb the delicate balance of the aquatic eco-system. Fishes are notorious for their ability to concentrate heavy metals in their muscles and since they play important roles in human nutrition, they need to be carefully screened to ensure the unnecessary high level of some toxic trace metals are not being transferred to man through fish consumption (Ademisi and Yusuf, 2007).

Over the last few decades there has been growing interest in determining heavy metal levels in the marine environment and attention was drawn to the measurement of contamination levels in public food supplied, particularly fish (Khaled, 2004). Although heavy metal is a closely defined term (Dwaf, 1996), it is widely recognized and usually applied to the wide spread contaminant of terrestrial and fresh water ecosystems. Some examples of heavy metals include lead, zinc, cadmium, copper, manganese, mercury and arsenic e.t.c. many of these heavy metals are toxic to organism at low concentrations (Alloway and Ayers, 1990, Akoto et al.,2008).

The concentration of metal in bio-available form is not necessarily proportional to the total concentration of the metal. The concentration of the various elements in water may be increased beyond their natural level due to the agricultural, domestic and industrial effluents. These substances are described as contaminants when discharged to the environment (Madu et al., 2008). In water, insoluble heavy metals may be bound to small slit particles. Metals and other contaminants in suspension or solution do simply flow down the stream, they form complexes with other compounds settle to the bottom and ingested by plants and animals or adsorbed to sediments. Consequently, aquatic organisms may acquire heavy metals in body directly from water via gills or food chain mechanisms (Collision and Shrimp, 2002).

Aquatic animals (including fish) bio-accumulate heavy metals in considerable amount in the tissue over a long time and the dependence of the populace in this area as source of protein makes it imperative to assess the level of heavy metals in the aquatic ecosystem in view of the health implications that cut across the food strata. Heavy metals contamination in river is one of the major quality issues in many fast growing cities because maintenance of water quality and sanitation infrastructure did not increase along with population and urbanization growth, especially for the developing countries (Sundaray et al., 2008; Amadi et al., 2010). Heavy metals are non-degradable and accumulate in the body system, causing damages to the internal organs (Lee et al., 2007; Lohani et al., 2008). They enter into river water from mining areas through various ways such as mine discharge, run off chemicals, weathering rocks and soils, wet and dry fall out of atmosphere particulate matter (Macklin et al., 2003; Bird et al., 2003; Kraft et al., 2003; Kraft et al., 2006; Venogopal et al., 2009) or from industrial areas via discharge of untreated industrial effluent in the river (Singh et al., 2008). Rivers in urban areas have also been associated with water quality problems because of the practice of discharging of untreated domestic and small scale wastes into the water bodies which lead to the increase in the level of metals concentration in river water (Rim- Rikeh et al., 2006; Juang et al., 2009; Venugopal et al., 2009). However rivers play a major role in assimilation or transporting municipal and industrial waste- water and run off from agricultural and mining land (Singh et al., 2008).

Environmental issues in

1.1Background of the Study

The importance of River Niger in the daily life of the people living along the bank of the river through which the river flows and its health implications make it imperative that thorough quality examination be conducted on the water. It is possible that floods and other anthropogenic activities might have introduced many substances into the water body that may be harmful to the people and the aquatic life.

The economic, health and physical well being of the people are tied to the river which is the major source of their daily supply of water for drinking and household chores. The river serves as source of their livelihood as most of the people depend heavily on the water for fishing both for commercial and subsistence purposes. The river is also used for irrigation farming for vegetables and other crops mostly for commercial purposes. The river also serves as their means of transportation. The people and the farm produce are transported using boats and ferries across the river to the markets.

Drinking water is the basic need for the development of human civilization. Over many centuries people lived on the banks of rivers, streams and other water courses. They drank, washed and moved from place to place on these waters. Only during the last 200 years we have seen rapid developments in water treatment. Developments were more rapid during 20th century, due to rapid developments in the quality and quantity requirements and due to increase in population per capita needs and industrial development (Rao, 2006).

 

Infectious diseases are transmitted by microbes for which water acts as a carrier. The normal carriers of infectious diseases are:

1.Water used for drinking, bathing, washing vegetables and fruits.

 

2.Food stuffs in which microbes develop

 

3.By direct or indirect contact of infected with healthy ones.

 

4.By insect in which water plays a vital role (Rao, 2006).

 

The lack of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation measure lead to a number of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, salmonellosis and typhoid, and every year millions of lives are claimed in developing countries. Diarrhoea is the major cause of the death of more than two million people per year worldwide, mostly children under the age of five. It is a symptom of infection or the result of a combination of a variety of enteric pathogens (Anon, 2000).

Water borne pathogens infest around 250 million people each year resulting in 10 to 20 million deaths worldwide. In South Africa alone more than 7 million people (approximately 17% of the population) do not have access to potable water supply and nearly 21 million (54% of the population) lack basic sanitation (Dwaf, 1996). This highlights the potential of infection due to water borne pathogens.The evaluation of water supplies for coliform bacteria is important in determining the sanitary quality of drinking water. High level of coliform count indicates a contaminated source, inadequate treatment or post treatment deficiencies (Matthew et al., 1984). Many developing regions suffer from either chronic shortage of freshwater or the readily accessible water resources are heavily polluted (Lehloesa and Muyiwa, 2000). Microbiological health risks remain associated with many aspect of water use including drinking water in developing

countries (Horne and Bennison, 1987). It has been reported that drinking water supplies have a long history of association with a wide spectrum of microbial infection. Therefore, the primary goal of water quality management from a health perspective is to ensure that consumers are not exposed to doses of pathogens that are likely to cause disease. Protection of water sources and treatment of water supplies have greatly reduced the incidence of these diseases in developing countries (Sues, 1982).

One of the difficulties in evaluating the impact of drinking water supply on health is the lack of local demographic statistics, particularly in rural communities. Therefore, it is important to know the incidence of diseases occurring in rural areas due to polluted water. This will provide an opportunity to compare the incidence of water-borne disease between the communities that have drinking water and those that do not.

Detection and enumeration of indicator organisms is the basic microbiological technique used in water quality monitoring (APHA and AWWA,1984). The coliform group of bacteria can be defined as the principal indicators of purity of water for domestic, industrial and other uses.

Along the River Niger over 80% of the population in Nigeria rely on surface water as the main source of water (Madu et al., 2008). This relatively high percentage of the population that is without proper water supply service indicates that many of the people still utilize untreated surface water for domestic purpose. Most of these people are poor and rely on state intervention for improved water supply.In less industrialized areas, pollution from human settlements lacking appropriate sanitary infrastructure, partially treated or untreated waste water, leachates from refuse dumps and from land use activities such as agriculture are the major pollution sources of the surface water

(Sodhi,2005). Microbiological and the physical water quality indicators are therefore, the major parameters to be monitored in the rivers, dams or boreholes of catchments (Dwaf, 1996).

Heavy metals enter human bodies through food, drinking water and air. Heavy metals can find its way into a surface water source through industrial and consumer waste or even from acidic rain breaking down soils and releasing heavy metals into the streams, dams, lake and rivers (Sundaray et al., 2006). The concentrations of the inorganic constituents of underground water are primarily dependent on the elemental availability in the soil and rocks through which the ground water percolates (Freeze and Cherry, 1979).

A wide variety of metals in various forms can be found in water, some concentration occur naturally (background level), their presence being influenced by the soil or rock mineralogy while others can be introduced through man’s activity (Onianwa et al.,2001).

Many heavy metals (such as Fe, Mn, Cu, Cd, and Pb) occur in nature in ore deposit (Laws, 1981., Ezegbo, 1989). As trace elements some heavy metals (e.g copper, selenium and zinc) are essential to maintain the metabolic process of the body. However at higher concentration they can lead to poisoning. Heavy metals are dangerous because they tend to bioaccumulate, causing some health effect like cancers, bone defects; (Osteomalacia and Osteoporosis) in human and aquatic animals. They accumulate in fishes or other aquatic animals thus adding to the danger of eating fish that may have been exposed to high level of heavy metals in water (Venugopal et al., 2009).

Heavy metals are already present in the environment, all man needs to do is to modify their concentration and the ways in which they spread. The trends to reduce use of heavy metals should be encouraged. However two points deserved special attention, recycling and disposal.

Eliminating the use of heavy metals is often extremely expensive and the outcome uncertain. The spreading of sludge on land; this issue goes far beyond the single question of heavy metals.

Technique of “slurrry spray” and the recurrent food crisis demonstrate considerable reticence on the part of farmers. There is no simple conclusion as regards the transfer of heavy metal into plants (Adeyeye, 1996)Very low concentration of most metal are required for living organism in the environment, but in excess concentration heavy metals can be harmful; the potential adverse impact of heavy metals are diverse pollution of aquatic system by heavy metals, inhibit primary production, nitrogen fixation, the mineralization of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, alter decomposition and enzymes synthesis (Forstner & William, 1983; Rahman et al.,2012).

Apart from the sources or origin of heavy metals, the physico- chemical properties of water also affect the concentration of heavy metal in soils. Organic matter and pH are the most important parameters controlling the accumulation and availability of heavy metals in soil environments. It is then necessary to evaluate the relationship among these parameters and heavy metals accumulation in soil (Nyamangara & Mzezewa, 1999).

The origin of sediment heavy metals can be divided into point and non-point sources of pollution. Point sources of pollution come from specific identifiable sources such as pipe. Non- point sources includes municipals sewage treatment plants, overflow from combined sanitary and storm sewers, storm water facilities and waste discharge from industry. Point sources includes storm water, run off from hazardous water, run off from hazardous and solid wastes, run off from crop land, livestock pens, mining and manufacturing operations and storm sites and atmonspheric depositon (USEPA,1996).

 

Chronic low-level intakes of heavy metals have damaging effects on human beings and other animals, because metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and copper cause serious environmental hazards and are known to be exceptionally toxic (Tucker et al., 2003)

Recent studies have shown for instance that human activities have created ecological pressure on the natural habitat of fish and other marine organism overtime. There is an upsurge of interest in water pollution as a result of this deleterious effect (Olowu et al., 2009). Furthermore, factors such as high population growth accompanied by intensive urbanization, increase in industrial activities and higher exploitation of natural resources including cultivatable land have caused pollution increase. There had been a steady increase in discharge that reaches the aquatic environment from industries (Atta et al., 1997). In addition to direct depletion of oxygen, the deposition of large quantities of organic materials in the water produces inorganic nutrients such as ammonia, nitrate, and phosphorus. These enrich the water considerably and give rise to dense algae growth or bloom which can cause the wide daily fluctuation in dissolved oxygen content of water bodies. This increased productivity caused by excessive organic loads can cause a decline in water quality.

Sediments are normally the final pathway of both natural and anthropogenic components produced or derived to the environment. Sediment quality is a good indication of pollution in the water column, where it tends to concentrate the heavy metals and other organic pollutant (Saheed and Shaker, 2008).Sediments have been known to be the major repository of heavy metals in aquatic system. Bioaccumulation and magnification is capable of leading to toxic level of these metals in fish even when the exposure is low (Olowu et al., 2009) .The presence of metal pollutant in fresh

water is known to disturb the delicate balance of the aquatic eco-system. Fishes are notorious for their ability to concentrate heavy metals in their muscles and since they play important roles in human nutrition, they need to be carefully screened to ensure the unnecessary high level of some toxic trace metals are not being transferred to man through fish consumption (Ademisi and Yusuf, 2007).

Over the last few decades there has been growing interest in determining heavy metal levels in the marine environment and attention was drawn to the measurement of contamination levels in public food supplied, particularly fish (Khaled, 2004). Although heavy metal is a closely defined term (Dwaf, 1996), it is widely recognized and usually applied to the wide spread contaminant of terrestrial and fresh water ecosystems. Some examples of heavy metals include lead, zinc, cadmium, copper, manganese, mercury and arsenic e.t.c. many of these heavy metals are toxic to organism at low concentrations (Alloway and Ayers, 1990, Akoto et al.,2008).

The concentration of metal in bio-available form is not necessarily proportional to the total concentration of the metal. The concentration of the various elements in water may be increased beyond their natural level due to the agricultural, domestic and industrial effluents. These substances are described as contaminants when discharged to the environment (Madu et al., 2008). In water, insoluble heavy metals may be bound to small slit particles. Metals and other contaminants in suspension or solution do simply flow down the stream, they form complexes with other compounds settle to the bottom and ingested by plants and animals or adsorbed to sediments. Consequently, aquatic organisms may acquire heavy metals in body directly from water via gills or food chain mechanisms (Collision and Shrimp, 2002).

Aquatic animals (including fish) bio-accumulate heavy metals in considerable amount in the tissue over a long time and the dependence of the populace in this area as source of protein makes it imperative to assess the level of heavy metals in the aquatic ecosystem in view of the health implications that cut across the food strata. Heavy metals contamination in river is one of the major quality issues in many fast growing cities because maintenance of water quality and sanitation infrastructure did not increase along with population and urbanization growth, especially for the developing countries (Sundaray et al., 2008; Amadi et al., 2010). Heavy metals are non-degradable and accumulate in the body system, causing damages to the internal organs (Lee et al., 2007; Lohani et al., 2008). They enter into river water from mining areas through various ways such as mine discharge, run off chemicals, weathering rocks and soils, wet and dry fall out of atmosphere particulate matter (Macklin et al., 2003; Bird et al., 2003; Kraft et al., 2003; Kraft et al., 2006; Venogopal et al., 2009) or from industrial areas via discharge of untreated industrial effluent in the river (Singh et al., 2008). Rivers in urban areas have also been associated with water quality problems because of the practice of discharging of untreated domestic and small scale wastes into the water bodies which lead to the increase in the level of metals concentration in river water (Rim- Rikeh et al., 2006; Juang et al., 2009; Venugopal et al., 2009). However rivers play a major role in assimilation or transporting municipal and industrial waste- water and run off from agricultural and mining land (Singh et al., 2008).

Environmental issues in recent years have dominated and generated more lively discussions than any other scientific topic. This may be due to the sudden realization of the damaging effect of man’s activities to the environment. These activities of men have resulted in acid rain, ozone layer depletion, deforestation, dessertation, erosion, global warming, solid waste, toxic chemicals which are detrimental to the environment (Ademoroti, 1996).

1.1Background of the Study

The importance of River Niger in the daily life of the people living along the bank of the river through which the river flows and its health implications make it imperative that thorough quality examination be conducted on the water. It is possible that floods and other anthropogenic activities might have introduced many substances into the water body that may be harmful to the people and the aquatic life.

The economic, health and physical well being of the people are tied to the river which is the major source of their daily supply of water for drinking and household chores. The river serves as source of their livelihood as most of the people depend heavily on the water for fishing both for commercial and subsistence purposes. The river is also used for irrigation farming for vegetables and other crops mostly for commercial purposes. The river also serves as their means of transportation. The people and the farm produce are transported using boats and ferries across the river to the markets.

Drinking water is the basic need for the development of human civilization. Over many centuries people lived on the banks of rivers, streams and other water courses. They drank, washed and moved from place to place on these waters. Only during the last 200 years we have seen rapid developments in water treatment. Developments were more rapid during 20th century, due to rapid developments in the quality and quantity requirements and due to increase in population per capita needs and industrial development (Rao, 2006).

 

Infectious diseases are transmitted by microbes for which water acts as a carrier. The normal carriers of infectious diseases are:

1.Water used for drinking, bathing, washing vegetables and fruits.

 

2.Food stuffs in which microbes develop

 

3.By direct or indirect contact of infected with healthy ones.

 

4.By insect in which water plays a vital role (Rao, 2006).

 

The lack of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation measure lead to a number of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, salmonellosis and typhoid, and every year millions of lives are claimed in developing countries. Diarrhoea is the major cause of the death of more than two million people per year worldwide, mostly children under the age of five. It is a symptom of infection or the result of a combination of a variety of enteric pathogens (Anon, 2000).

Water borne pathogens infest around 250 million people each year resulting in 10 to 20 million deaths worldwide. In South Africa alone more than 7 million people (approximately 17% of the population) do not have access to potable water supply and nearly 21 million (54% of the population) lack basic sanitation (Dwaf, 1996). This highlights the potential of infection due to water borne pathogens.The evaluation of water supplies for coliform bacteria is important in determining the sanitary quality of drinking water. High level of coliform count indicates a contaminated source, inadequate treatment or post treatment deficiencies (Matthew et al., 1984). Many developing regions suffer from either chronic shortage of freshwater or the readily accessible water resources are heavily polluted (Lehloesa and Muyiwa, 2000). Microbiological health risks remain associated with many aspect of water use including drinking water in developing

countries (Horne and Bennison, 1987). It has been reported that drinking water supplies have a long history of association with a wide spectrum of microbial infection. Therefore, the primary goal of water quality management from a health perspective is to ensure that consumers are not exposed to doses of pathogens that are likely to cause disease. Protection of water sources and treatment of water supplies have greatly reduced the incidence of these diseases in developing countries (Sues, 1982).

One of the difficulties in evaluating the impact of drinking water supply on health is the lack of local demographic statistics, particularly in rural communities. Therefore, it is important to know the incidence of diseases occurring in rural areas due to polluted water. This will provide an opportunity to compare the incidence of water-borne disease between the communities that have drinking water and those that do not.

Detection and enumeration of indicator organisms is the basic microbiological technique used in water quality monitoring (APHA and AWWA,1984). The coliform group of bacteria can be defined as the principal indicators of purity of water for domestic, industrial and other uses.

Along the River Niger over 80% of the population in Nigeria rely on surface water as the main source of water (Madu et al., 2008). This relatively high percentage of the population that is without proper water supply service indicates that many of the people still utilize untreated surface water for domestic purpose. Most of these people are poor and rely on state intervention for improved water supply.In less industrialized areas, pollution from human settlements lacking appropriate sanitary infrastructure, partially treated or untreated waste water, leachates from refuse dumps and from land use activities such as agriculture are the major pollution sources of the surface water

(Sodhi,2005). Microbiological and the physical water quality indicators are therefore, the major parameters to be monitored in the rivers, dams or boreholes of catchments (Dwaf, 1996).

Heavy metals enter human bodies through food, drinking water and air. Heavy metals can find its way into a surface water source through industrial and consumer waste or even from acidic rain breaking down soils and releasing heavy metals into the streams, dams, lake and rivers (Sundaray et al., 2006). The concentrations of the inorganic constituents of underground water are primarily dependent on the elemental availability in the soil and rocks through which the ground water percolates (Freeze and Cherry, 1979).

A wide variety of metals in various forms can be found in water, some concentration occur naturally (background level), their presence being influenced by the soil or rock mineralogy while others can be introduced through man’s activity (Onianwa et al.,2001).

Many heavy metals (such as Fe, Mn, Cu, Cd, and Pb) occur in nature in ore deposit (Laws, 1981., Ezegbo, 1989). As trace elements some heavy metals (e.g copper, selenium and zinc) are essential to maintain the metabolic process of the body. However at higher concentration they can lead to poisoning. Heavy metals are dangerous because they tend to bioaccumulate, causing some health effect like cancers, bone defects; (Osteomalacia and Osteoporosis) in human and aquatic animals. They accumulate in fishes or other aquatic animals thus adding to the danger of eating fish that may have been exposed to high level of heavy metals in water (Venugopal et al., 2009).

Heavy metals are already present in the environment, all man needs to do is to modify their concentration and the ways in which they spread. The trends to reduce use of heavy metals should be encouraged. However two points deserved special attention, recycling and disposal.

Eliminating the use of heavy metals is often extremely expensive and the outcome uncertain. The spreading of sludge on land; this issue goes far beyond the single question of heavy metals.

Technique of “slurrry spray” and the recurrent food crisis demonstrate considerable reticence on the part of farmers. There is no simple conclusion as regards the transfer of heavy metal into plants (Adeyeye, 1996)Very low concentration of most metal are required for living organism in the environment, but in excess concentration heavy metals can be harmful; the potential adverse impact of heavy metals are diverse pollution of aquatic system by heavy metals, inhibit primary production, nitrogen fixation, the mineralization of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, alter decomposition and enzymes synthesis (Forstner & William, 1983; Rahman et al.,2012).

Apart from the sources or origin of heavy metals, the physico- chemical properties of water also affect the concentration of heavy metal in soils. Organic matter and pH are the most important parameters controlling the accumulation and availability of heavy metals in soil environments. It is then necessary to evaluate the relationship among these parameters and heavy metals accumulation in soil (Nyamangara & Mzezewa, 1999).

The origin of sediment heavy metals can be divided into point and non-point sources of pollution. Point sources of pollution come from specific identifiable sources such as pipe. Non- point sources includes municipals sewage treatment plants, overflow from combined sanitary and storm sewers, storm water facilities and waste discharge from industry. Point sources includes storm water, run off from hazardous water, run off from hazardous and solid wastes, run off from crop land, livestock pens, mining and manufacturing operations and storm sites and atmonspheric depositon (USEPA,1996).

 

Chronic low-level intakes of heavy metals have damaging effects on human beings and other animals, because metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and copper cause serious environmental hazards and are known to be exceptionally toxic (Tucker et al., 2003)

Recent studies have shown for instance that human activities have created ecological pressure on the natural habitat of fish and other marine organism overtime. There is an upsurge of interest in water pollution as a result of this deleterious effect (Olowu et al., 2009). Furthermore, factors such as high population growth accompanied by intensive urbanization, increase in industrial activities and higher exploitation of natural resources including cultivatable land have caused pollution increase. There had been a steady increase in discharge that reaches the aquatic environment from industries (Atta et al., 1997). In addition to direct depletion of oxygen, the deposition of large quantities of organic materials in the water produces inorganic nutrients such as ammonia, nitrate, and phosphorus. These enrich the water considerably and give rise to dense algae growth or bloom which can cause the wide daily fluctuation in dissolved oxygen content of water bodies. This increased productivity caused by excessive organic loads can cause a decline in water quality.

Sediments are normally the final pathway of both natural and anthropogenic components produced or derived to the environment. Sediment quality is a good indication of pollution in the water column, where it tends to concentrate the heavy metals and other organic pollutant (Saheed and Shaker, 2008).Sediments have been known to be the major repository of heavy metals in aquatic system. Bioaccumulation and magnification is capable of leading to toxic level of these metals in fish even when the exposure is low (Olowu et al., 2009) .The presence of metal pollutant in fresh

water is known to disturb the delicate balance of the aquatic eco-system. Fishes are notorious for their ability to concentrate heavy metals in their muscles and since they play important roles in human nutrition, they need to be carefully screened to ensure the unnecessary high level of some toxic trace metals are not being transferred to man through fish consumption (Ademisi and Yusuf, 2007).

Over the last few decades there has been growing interest in determining heavy metal levels in the marine environment and attention was drawn to the measurement of contamination levels in public food supplied, particularly fish (Khaled, 2004). Although heavy metal is a closely defined term (Dwaf, 1996), it is widely recognized and usually applied to the wide spread contaminant of terrestrial and fresh water ecosystems. Some examples of heavy metals include lead, zinc, cadmium, copper, manganese, mercury and arsenic e.t.c. many of these heavy metals are toxic to organism at low concentrations (Alloway and Ayers, 1990, Akoto et al.,2008).

The concentration of metal in bio-available form is not necessarily proportional to the total concentration of the metal. The concentration of the various elements in water may be increased beyond their natural level due to the agricultural, domestic and industrial effluents. These substances are described as contaminants when discharged to the environment (Madu et al., 2008). In water, insoluble heavy metals may be bound to small slit particles. Metals and other contaminants in suspension or solution do simply flow down the stream, they form complexes with other compounds settle to the bottom and ingested by plants and animals or adsorbed to sediments. Consequently, aquatic organisms may acquire heavy metals in body directly from water via gills or food chain mechanisms (Collision and Shrimp, 2002).

Aquatic animals (including fish) bio-accumulate heavy metals in considerable amount in the tissue over a long time and the dependence of the populace in this area as source of protein makes it imperative to assess the level of heavy metals in the aquatic ecosystem in view of the health implications that cut across the food strata. Heavy metals contamination in river is one of the major quality issues in many fast growing cities because maintenance of water quality and sanitation infrastructure did not increase along with population and urbanization growth, especially for the developing countries (Sundaray et al., 2008; Amadi et al., 2010). Heavy metals are non-degradable and accumulate in the body system, causing damages to the internal organs (Lee et al., 2007; Lohani et al., 2008). They enter into river water from mining areas through various ways such as mine discharge, run off chemicals, weathering rocks and soils, wet and dry fall out of atmosphere particulate matter (Macklin et al., 2003; Bird et al., 2003; Kraft et al., 2003; Kraft et al., 2006; Venogopal et al., 2009) or from industrial areas via discharge of untreated industrial effluent in the river (Singh et al., 2008). Rivers in urban areas have also been associated with water quality problems because of the practice of discharging of untreated domestic and small scale wastes into the water bodies which lead to the increase in the level of metals concentration in river water (Rim- Rikeh et al., 2006; Juang et al., 2009; Venugopal et al., 2009). However rivers play a major role in assimilation or transporting municipal and industrial waste- water and run off from agricultural and mining land (Singh et al., 2008).

Environmental issues in recent years have dominated and generated more lively discussions than any other scientific topic. This may be due to the sudden realization of the damaging effect of man’s activities to the environment. These activities of men have resulted in acid rain, ozone layer depletion, deforestation, dessertation, erosion, global warming, solid waste, toxic chemicals which are detrimental to the environment (Ademoroti, 1996).

 

recent years have dominated and generated more lively discussions than any other scientific topic. This may be due to the sudden realization of the damaging effect of man’s activities to the environment. These activities of men have resulted in acid rain, ozone layer depletion, deforestation, dessertation, erosion, global warming, solid waste, toxic chemicals which are detrimental to the environment (Ademoroti, 1996).