INTRODUCTION Quality drinking water should be free from harmful levels of impurities such as heavy metals and other inorganic elements. METHODS Samples of tap water collected from 24 locations in Peninsular Malaysia were determined for inorganic element content. Minerals and heavy metals were analysed by spectroscopy methods, while non-metal elements were analysed using test kits. RESULTS M...

This paper presents a fluoride health risk characterization approach to identify the hyper-sensitive population of adverse effect like tooth decay, dental fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis. In this context, a sampling campaign has been done over 100 Tunisian water consumption points (tap). Laboratory analysis results show that the quality of drinking water is affected by high fluoride concentrat...

PURPOSE A recent increase in Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) cases has been associated with Complete MoisturePlus, although many cases used other solutions. Complete MoisturePlus contains taurine and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, unlike other multipurpose solutions (MPSs). The purpose of this study is to (1) determine contact lens solution efficacy against recent clinical and tap water Acanthamoeb...

Irrigating wounds with tap water does not increase colonisation, but controlled studies are required for further evidence. Microbial colonisation was assessed in skin wounds, before and after irrigation with tap water, and was compared with irrigation using 0·9% sodium chloride sterile solution. The study included 120 subjects with chronic, traumatic, vascular, pressure or neuropathic wounds. A...

The continuous expansion of urban areas is associated with increased water demand, both for domestic and non-domestic uses. To cover this additional demand, centralised infrastructure, such as water supply and distribution networks tend to become more and more complicated and are eventually over-extended with adverse effects on their reliability. To address this, there exist two main strategies...

Legionella spp. are ubiquitous in aquatic habitats and water distribution systems, including dental unit waterlines (DUWLs). The aim of the present study was to determine the prevalence of Legionella in DUWLs and tap water samples using PMA-qPCR and standard culture methods. The total viable counts (TVCs) of aerobic heterotrophic bacteria in the samples were also determined. Legionella spp. wer...

Previous work suggests that δ(18)O values of human hair can be used to constrain the region-of-origin of unknown individuals, but robust assessments of uncertainties in this method are lacking. Here we assess one source of uncertainty - temporal variation in the δ(18)O value of drinking water - using a monthly tap water survey of δ(18)O to develop geospatial models (i.e., maps) of the intra-ann...

Background and objectives: Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is one of the pathogenic bacteria originated from water and is released through water. This study was conducted with the aim of isolating Stenotrophomonas maltophilia from water and water tap in the environment and investigating the existence of rpfF gene and its relation with biofilm formation, motility and the extracellular enzymes of

The present study describes a simple and highly selective method for separation, preconcentration and spectrophotometric determination of extremely low concentrations of lead. It is based on flotation of a complex of Pb(2+) ions and Alizarin yellow between aqueous and n-hexane interface at pH = 6. The proposed procedure is also applied for determination of lead in both tap water and prepared se...