Evaluation of drinking water quality and health risk assessment in rural primary schools along the Thai Myanmar border.

Safe drinking water in schools is important for students' health. Despite the presence of water treatment systems in rural schools, systematic monitoring and evaluation of drinking water quality are often insufficiently integrated into risk assessment frameworks, potentially compromising student health. In this study, a cross-sectional survey was conducted using drinking water samples from rural primary schools along the Thai-Myanmar border in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, aiming to evaluate the quality of drinking water in terms of physicochemical and bacteriological parameters and assess the health risks to students. A total of 52 drinking water samples were collected for water quality analysis. Among these, approximately 42% (n = 22) of these collected samples did not comply with Thailand's recommended limits of drinking water quality. Among the noncompliant samples, total coliform bacteria were detected in 59% (n = 13), fluoride concentrations exceeded the permissible limit of 0.70 mg/L in 18% (n = 4), and arsenic levels surpassed the recommended limit of 10 µg/L in 9% (n = 2). These contaminants may pose a potential health risk to students. Health risk assessments indicated that, although the majority of hazard index (HI) and cancer risk (CR) values were within acceptable limits (HI < 1; CR between 1 × 10⁻