Journal
JOURNAL OF WATER AND HEALTH
Volume 9, Issue 3, Pages 609-616Publisher
IWA PUBLISHING
DOI: 10.2166/wh.2011.193
Keywords
burial practices; gravesite leachate; groundwater contamination; north-central Nigeria
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Funding
- Shippensburg University Center for Faculty Excellence in Scholarship and Teaching (SU-CFEST)
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Several cultures of north-central Nigeria do not use community cemeteries. Instead, human remains are buried in and around family compounds, often in shallow and sometimes unmarked graves. At several locations, graves and drinking water wells end up too close to be presumed environmentally safe. This paper reports findings of a pilot study that explored the potential for groundwater contamination from gravesites in some rural settlements of north-central Nigeria. Preliminary results suggest that the long-standing burial practices among some cultures of rural north-central Nigeria may potentially compromise groundwater quality, which is, by far, their most important source of drinking water.
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