ABSTRACT
West Africa is located in the tropics with 70% of its territory bounded by the Atlantic shore line. Its potential mineral waters, tourism and the bottled mineral water industry is far from harnessed, hence the current survey of the essential elements such as Ca and Mg in the thirteen most promising medicinal springs of the African sub-region. A comparison of their concentrations in these waters indicate ranges for Ca and Mg suitable for both internal and external cures when compared with concentrations in selected springs used by some Polish health resorts. The concentrations for Ca in West Africa were lowest at 4.81 mg/dm3 and highest at 110.22 mg/dm3 while values for Mg had 1.94 mg/dm3 as lowest and 43.75 mg/dm3 as highest. The lowest level for the sampled springs in Poland was 144.29 mg/dm3 and 1503.00 mg/dm3 for Ca, as against 51.04 mg/dm3 and 947.90 mg/dm3 for Mg. While some of the spring waters are meteoric in nature-low mineralised, and hence suitable for bottling as dietary waters, others are moderately mineralised to chlorosodic mineral waters suitable for application in hydrotherapy. ‘Possotome’ water is the only mineral water brand in Benin Republic, but there are none in Nigeria. This result might perhaps boost the knowledge of medical hydrogeologists, the World Health Organisation, and prospective investors in the bottled mineral water industry in West Africa.
