Jawad-Ul-HaqueSiddique, Md. Abu BakarIslam, Md. SaifulAli, Mir MohammadTokatli, CemIslam, AznarulPal, Subodh Chandra2024-06-122024-06-1220230048-96971879-1026https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159383https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14551/20161The COVID-19 era has profoundly affected everyday human life, the environment, and freshwater ecosystems world-wide. Despite the numerous influences, a strict COVID-19 lockdown might improve the surface water quality and thus provide an unprecedented opportunity to restore the degraded freshwater resource. Therefore, we intend to investi-gate the spatiotemporal water quality, sources, and preliminary health risks of heavy metal(loid)s in the Karatoya River basin (KRB), a tropical urban river in Bangladesh. Seventy water samples were collected from 35 stations in KRB in 2019 and 2022 during the dry season. The results showed that the concentrations of Ni, Cu, Zn, Pb, Cd, and Cr were significantly reduced by 89.3-99.7 % during the post-lockdown period (p < 0.05). However, pH, Fe, Mn, and As concentrations increased due to the rise of urban waste and the usage of disinfectants during the post-en10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159383info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessCOVID-19 LockdownSurface Water QualityIrrigation Water QualityCarcinogenic RiskEco-Restoration StrategiesMetal PollutionWater-QualitySurface-WaterGroundwaterSoilsSedimentsAquiferEstuaryArticle857Q1WOS:0008800357000052-s2.0-8513986795836240937Q1