Water Treatment "Part 1": why is it necessary?

We discussed everything relevant to the physicochemical properties of water, techniques of water analysis, methods of collecting samples, machines used in labs for water analysis, calibration procedures, and so on in earlier articles named Chemistry of water. We may address water treatment now that we know how to identify and evaluate water components, because treatment procedures are connected to water quality, composition, and the type of contaminants contained in it, depending on the source.

Clean water runs from a tap

Humans need water to maintain general health. Therefore, it was necessary for governments to establish an appropriate system to provide citizens with safe and potable water. Water is extracted from underground, rivers, and lakes for this purpose, and then treated using various processes depending on its source, before being transported and distributed to homes, public facilities, and factories via a network of pipes, which is known as water supply.

Why isn't water utilized directly from the source without being treated?

The cholera pandemic in London was the subject of research by scientist John Snow, who concluded that the water has contaminants and published his findings in 1854. The catchment areas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers are thought to be the source of this acute intestinal illness, prompting scientist Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch to go to India and Egypt in 1883 to investigate the origins of this disease.

Koch (on the microscope) and his colleague Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer (standing) investigating cholera outbreak in Bombay, India.

Cholera was transmitted from India to Western Europe by sailors. And it was believed that the only incubator for this disease is humans, but it turns out that cholera germs can live in marine plankton, according to research carried out by the American environmental microbiologist and scientific administrator Rita Rossi Colwell.
With the passage of time, it was found that cholera was spread under very poor sanitary conditions, through drinking water, or food that was prepared with this water, and this epidemic was also linked to the El Niño phenomenon, which could lead to contamination of the water flowing internally due to the change in the currents Ocean. In light of all this, an effort must be made to provide reliable, healthy and safe drinking water to the communities through water treatment.

References:

• Unsafe water kills more people than war, Ban says on World Day". UN News. 22 March 2010. Retrieved 10 May 2018
• Raymond Desjardins- Livre: Le traitement des eaux- 2éme edition- Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal- 1997- ISBN 2-553-00643-8
• Drinking Water Treatment- EDX- Delft University of Technology.