What is Potable Water and How is it Treated?
Published on by Nick Nicholas, App Eng/Technical Director at Genesis Water Technologies, Inc. in Technology
What is potable water?
If you can drink it or cook with it, it’s potable. Potable water is classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as water that is not contaminated with organic, inorganic, radiological, or microbiological pollutants and does not present any differences in taste, smell, or appearance. A majority of the earth’s population has regular and convenient access to potable water, but that still leaves about a billion people that do not.
The epidemic of the lack of potable water on a global scale
A shortage or complete lack of potable water is one facet of the water scarcity epidemic (which you can read more about here). However, it isn’t just about not having access to water, period. It’s about not having access to clean water. You could be floating on a barge full of food in the middle of the ocean but you still wouldn’t survive by drinking the seawater.
Even places with plenty of natural water sources don’t have regular and convenient access to potable water. In statistics released in 2015, WHO reported that 2.1 billion people do not have safely managed drinking water services. This was broken down into:
1.3 billion people with basic services, meaning an improved water source located within a round trip of 30 minutes
263 million people with limited services, or an improved water source requiring more than 30 minutes to collect water
423 million people taking water from unprotected wells and springs
159 million people collecting untreated surface water from lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams.
Those people are much more likely to contract diseases or illness. Contaminated water can contain dozens of pathogens, compounds, and elements that can cause potentially deadly health effects like cancer, organ damage, gastrointestinal issues, and others.
What causes water to become contaminated?
Selected contaminants and their sources are described below. They have been divided into the five categories defined by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Read the full article in the link below.
Attached link
https://genesiswatertech.com/blog-post/what-is-potable-water-and-how-is-it-treated/Media
Taxonomy
- Oxidation
- Electrocoagulation
- Flocculation
- Micropollutants
- UV Disinfection
- Filtration
- Treatment Plants
- Reverse Osmosis
- Filtration Solutions
- Water Treatment Solutions
- Desalination
- Membrane Technology
- Reverse Osmosis
- Sea Water Filtration
- Membrane Filtration
- Filtration
- Sea Water Desalinisation
- Equipment & Machinery
- Sustainable Desalination
- Desalination Pre-treatment
- Drinking Water Managment
- Drinking Water
- water packaged plants
- water treatment