Abstract:

Trace elements in drinking water can influence the longevity of human beings. Drinking water samples from a longevity county Xiayi and a nearby non-longevity county Yucheng were collected and tested the element concentrations. Support vector machine (SVM), as a pattern recognition technique for small sample size classification problem, was applied to analyze the difference of element concentrations in the drinking water from both counties. Further the SVM is used to select the elements with the most discrepancy. The study revealed large discrepancies in element concentrations in drinking water from these two counties. Barium, Ca, F, Mg, Mn, Si and Sr in drinking water from Xiayi is higher than that from Yucheng, whereas the Fe, K, Pb, Cu, Co, Cr, Ni in drinking water from Xiayi is lower. The significance of difference is Cr> Mn> Co> Fe. The high Mn, Ca and low Cr, Cd, Co, Fe contents in drinking water from Xiayi are conductive to local longevity.