High arsenic concentrations in groundwater in different states of India have become a major cause of concern in recent years. The groundwater in the past was considered to be safe for drinking purposes, but now it is recognized that many shallow tube wells contain arsenic at concentrations higher than the safe limit set for drinking purpose by WHO (1993). It is becoming an emerging issue in the...

Since publication of the 3rd Edition of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Drinking Water Quality guidelines, global adoption of water safety plans (WSPs) has been gathering momentum. Most guidance lists managerial commitment and 'buy-in' as critical to the success of WSP implementation; yet the detail on how to generate it is lacking. This commentary discusses aspects of managerial commitment...

The West of Scotland has had particular problems in the past associated with soft acidic water supplies and uptake of lead from domestic plumbing systems by such water. As a consequence of this, health problems related to overexposure to lead have been identified. The current debate on acidification of ground waters by acid rain is therefore particularly pertinent to this area. Studies have sho...

In 1974, President Gerald Ford signed into law the Safe Drinking Water Act, the first piece of legislation of its kind to provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for overseeing the nation's drinking water supply. The law has proven instrumental in setting standards for ensuring that the US population can access drinking water that is safe. However, the law delegates much of its monitoring ...

Water supply surveillance generates data on the safety and adequacy of drinking water supply in order to contribute to the protection of human health. Most current models of water supply surveillance for urban areas come from developed countries and have significant shortcomings if directly applied elsewhere. There are differences not only in socio-economic conditions but also in the nature of ...

Ecologically Sustainable Development in Australia can be described as going beyond the protection of the environment from the impacts of pollution, to protecting and conserving natural resources. In an urban environmental context this means urban development (both greenfield development and urban renewal) that seeks to have no long term effects on various aspects of the environment related to a...

Known as one of the ten most important advances on Public Health in the 20th century, fluoridation of public water supply is a measure of wide population coverage, which is effective on caries control. The city of Araçatuba, in the Northwest region of the São Paulo state, Brazil, started public water supply fluoridation in 1972 and, based on the average annual highest temperature, has kept the ...

The sustainability of irrigated agriculture in many arid and semiarid areas of the world is at risk because of a combination of several interrelated factors, including lack of fresh water, lack of drainage, the presence of high water tables, and salinization of soil and groundwater resources. Nowhere in the United States are these issues more apparent than in the San Joaquin Valley of Californi...

Hydrology is modeling, starting from the moment a hydrologist stands on a hill and develops a concept of the system; continuing with application of an analytical model such as Darcy’s law, the Theis equation, or chemical equilibria; and sometimes extending to elaborate numerical models. Darcy created the first quantitative ground water model in 1856, driven by the practical goal of providing a ...

Significant advances in water treatment over the last century have resulted in massive improvements in the microbiological safety of public drinking water supplies in the UK and the developed countries. Incidences of illness due to poor treatment or post-treatment contamination are rare, but when they occur tend to attract considerable media attention. A well managed water treatment works and s...