Abstract: In order to ascertain the environmental background levels of Quaternary shallow groundwater in Wuhan City, based on water quality analysis of 21 groundwater samples collected in 2014, the authors used Grubbs test to reject abnormal data and Shapiro-Wilk method to examine distribution type, and calculated the environmental background levels of K⁺+Na⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, F^-, Cl^-, SO^2-_4, HCO^-_3, NH^+_4, TDS and total water hardness. The results show that the distribution type of the main components of groundwater in the study area is dominated by the normal distribution, and the log normal distribution is rare with no skewness distribution. Compared with the background levels of the 1990s in eastern Jianghan Plain, Ca²⁺ is relatively decreasing, and K⁺, Na⁺and Mg²⁺ are slightly increasing. Except the increased HCO^-_3, the rest of the anions are significantly reduced. The change of chemical components of groundwater is mainly related to the weathering dissolution of rocks in northern mountains and the runoff and redox conditions of the groundwater.