Qualidade da água de fontes de Cascavel-Pr utilizando análise de componentes principais (PCA)

Abstract

The assessment of the quality of water for human consumption is essential, as it is related to ensuring the health of the population. To a large extent, contamination is caused by toxic waste released into rivers, seas and lakes, mainly from human activity, but it can also be caused by intrinsic environmental factors, such as pathogens, leaching from rocks with the presence of toxic metals and degradation of soil. organic matter. For this reason, knowing the profile of water sources with the minimum of parameters to be determined and relating them to their geographic location can be both a challenge and an opportunity. In this work, seven sources in the city of Cascavel (Paraná) were selected as a model, with monitoring during a period of ten months, and subsequently, the characterization of the water from each source was carried out, through parameters of pH, conductivity, turbidity, total solids, organic matter concentration, nitrate concentration and thermotolerant and total coliforms, also assessing the geographic surroundings of these sources, indicating which watershed they belong to, describing the degree of impact on the ecosystem in order to bring information to public bodies regarding monitoring in the area. The results showed that, due to contamination by thermotolerant and total coliforms, all water sources are disapproved in terms of potability, while other parameters remained within the range accepted by legislation. With the Principal Components Analysis method, it was possible to identify the sources, and to discriminate the studied sources. This separation at some points is influenced by urbanization.