Seeking safe storage: a comparison of drinking water quality in clay and plastic vessels.

Several point-of-use water treatment interventions have shown the beneficial health effect of drinking water treated and stored in narrow-mouthed, spigoted plastic vessels designed to reduce chlorine decay and limit recontamination.1,2 However, more than 90% of the 43 000 households targeted by the Nyanza Healthy Water Project in western Kenya, Africa, preferred traditional, wide-mouthed clay vessels.3 In laboratoryand village-based evaluations, we compared chlorine decay and disinfection rates in turbid surface water treated and stored in locally available clay vessels and plastic jerry cans.