Assessment of drinking water quality

Abstract

It is needless to say that the quality of water is of vital importance to public health. Efficient surveillance and check strategies are important for executing a high quality management of this resource. Fourty eight water samples were collected randomly from different localities within Tabuk in the period between April 2012 and July 2012. Water samples were subjected to Chemical, Bacteriological and Parasitological examination. Drinking water samples taken in the study are almost following the WHO and US-EPA standards with few exceptions in the TOC (41.2%), Fluoride (33%), Hg (17%), but the alkalinity of water does not make it very harmful. Tap water is more alkaline than other samples with higher salinity than standard, high TDS and hence EC, it also suffer from high presence of TOC, Fluoride, bromide and mercury, so it is least quality to be used as drinking water. Commercial Zamzam water has proven to contain high levels of fluoride, TOC and bromide when compared to drinking water. It also has higher salinity %, TDS and hence higher electrical conductivity than drinking water. For bacteriological examination, 12% of water samples were exceeded the WHO guideline value (>10cfu/100ml), as the total coliform count was determined on each sample through the most probable number of colony forming units method. Parasitological examination revealed that giardia cysts were detected in 25% of water samples and C. parvi oocysts were detected in 16.6 % of water samples by both microscopy and ELISA methods.