Peter, I'm not sure where you're getting this from! You seem to be assuming that nothing happened from 1876 until recently, so thousands of people must have died from waterborne diseases unnecessarily. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. The main killer waterborne diseases are cholera and typhoid. There's also dysentery, but this is similar in causes to the other two and less dangerous. Cholera was eradicated in Britain by the end of the 19th century. You may have heard of the famous "handle of the Broad St pump" affair , in which Dr John Snow identified the well in Broad St, London as the cause of a local cholera outbreak. He removed the handle of the pump and the outbreak stopped. Because Snow identified the source by plotting deaths on a map, he became the founder of the science of epidemiology. In the years that followed, increased awareness of the causes of waterborne diseases resulted in huge efforts to improve water supplies. The city of Birmingham, in the English Midlands, laid a long large diameter pipeline from mountainous north Wales, to bring fresh water to replace contaminated local supplies. Liverpool did the same and Manchester laid pipelines from the English Lake District, where they constructed a new reservoir. In London, where the distances to the pristine waters of Wales and north west England are too great, they treated the main source of contamination instead, which was the discharge of raw sewage into the River Thames. Major large diameter interceptor sewers designed by a famous engineer called Joseph Bazalgette were constructed along the banks of the Thames so the sewage was transferred to a treatment plant downstream of the city. Water treatment also improved, with general installation of slow sand filters and, slightly later, the introduction of chlorination. The only outbreak of waterborne diseases causing deaths in Britain during the 20th century occurred in the early 1920s, when a typhoid outbreak killed around 30 people in Croydon. It was found that one of the workers performing maintenance on a well was a carrier. During my career in the UK water industry when I worked on water sources, I had to have regular medical testing to ensure I had not become a carrier - as did all of my colleagues. This followed legislation in the 1945 Water Act, which reformed the industry, making it possible for small local authorities to join forces to improve and protect water supplies, by creating "Water Boards". My first job as a water engineer in the 1960s was working for such a Water Board in north west England.
Published by Alan Bland, Principal at AB-ility Consultancy
Peter, I'm not sure where you're getting this from! You seem to be assuming that nothing happened from 1876 until recently, so thousands of people must have died from waterborne diseases unnecessarily. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. The main killer waterborne diseases are cholera and typhoid. There's also dysentery, but this is similar in causes to the other two and less dangerous. Cholera was eradicated in Britain by the end of the 19th century. You may have heard of the famous "handle of the Broad St pump" affair , in which Dr John Snow identified the well in Broad St, London as the cause of a local cholera outbreak. He removed the handle of the pump and the outbreak stopped. Because Snow identified the source by plotting deaths on a map, he became the founder of the science of epidemiology. In the years that followed, increased awareness of the causes of waterborne diseases resulted in huge efforts to improve water supplies. The city of Birmingham, in the English Midlands, laid a long large diameter pipeline from mountainous north Wales, to bring fresh water to replace contaminated local supplies. Liverpool did the same and Manchester laid pipelines from the English Lake District, where they constructed a new reservoir. In London, where the distances to the pristine waters of Wales and north west England are too great, they treated the main source of contamination instead, which was the discharge of raw sewage into the River Thames. Major large diameter interceptor sewers designed by a famous engineer called Joseph Bazalgette were constructed along the banks of the Thames so the sewage was transferred to a treatment plant downstream of the city. Water treatment also improved, with general installation of slow sand filters and, slightly later, the introduction of chlorination. The only outbreak of waterborne diseases causing deaths in Britain during the 20th century occurred in the early 1920s, when a typhoid outbreak killed around 30 people in Croydon. It was found that one of the workers performing maintenance on a well was a carrier. During my career in the UK water industry when I worked on water sources, I had to have regular medical testing to ensure I had not become a carrier - as did all of my colleagues. This followed legislation in the 1945 Water Act, which reformed the industry, making it possible for small local authorities to join forces to improve and protect water supplies, by creating "Water Boards". My first job as a water engineer in the 1960s was working for such a Water Board in north west England.