16
Drinking Water Quality for the 21st CenturyNew Technologies for a New Era
H. S. Weinberg
Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400, USA e-mail: howard_weinberg@unc.edu.
Tel: +1-919-966-3859 Fax: +1-919-966-7911
Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) ominously suggests that at current growth
by the year 2025 the predicted world's population of nearly 9 billion people would
exceed the planet's supply of drinking water. Conservation, watershed protection,
and reclamation will become essential components of water management in our
new millenium in order to meet the increased demand. Nevertheless, as our
environment breeds more pathogenic organisms, there will be a wider disparity in
the distribution of water resources as those countries with the technologies to
battle the new threats to our water supply may be able to stem this shortfall. There
are, however, approaches that can be taken now to ensure continued supplies of
safe drinking water. The new technologies that are available to manage the quality
of our water supplies are discussed in this chapter, and it is envisioned that some
of these have the potential for global deployment that as part of a worldwide
population stabilization progam will suceed in ensuring the presence of drinking
water for centuries to come.
1 Introduction
Consumer confidence in drinking water is, first and foremost, affected by the
esthetics of the product. This can sometimes be a naive approach, as was
demonstrated most dramatically in 1849 in London, when people consumed water
from the cholera-contaminated Broad Street well because of its preferred taste
(Okun 1996). More recently in the United States, the Louisville Kentucky
treatment plant had to respond to major customer dissatisfaction when geosmin
and 2-methylisobomeol (MlB) odors affected the tap water (Song et al. 2000). In
contrast to these naturally occurring and non-health-threatening compounds whose
origins are in algal growth in open reservoirs, the ever-increasing inventory of
anthropogenic compounds entering our environment poses serious health threats
to our drinking water supplies. Methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MtBE), for example, is
H. Rubin / P. Nachtnebel / J. Fuerst / U. Shamir
Preserving the Quality of Our Water Resources
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002
Drinking Water Quality for the 21st CenturyNew Technologies for a New Era
H. S. Weinberg
Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400, USA e-mail: howard_weinberg@unc.edu.
Tel: +1-919-966-3859 Fax: +1-919-966-7911
Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) ominously suggests that at current growth
by the year 2025 the predicted world's population of nearly 9 billion people would
exceed the planet's supply of drinking water. Conservation, watershed protection,
and reclamation will become essential components of water management in our
new millenium in order to meet the increased demand. Nevertheless, as our
environment breeds more pathogenic organisms, there will be a wider disparity in
the distribution of water resources as those countries with the technologies to
battle the new threats to our water supply may be able to stem this shortfall. There
are, however, approaches that can be taken now to ensure continued supplies of
safe drinking water. The new technologies that are available to manage the quality
of our water supplies are discussed in this chapter, and it is envisioned that some
of these have the potential for global deployment that as part of a worldwide
population stabilization progam will suceed in ensuring the presence of drinking
water for centuries to come.
1 Introduction
Consumer confidence in drinking water is, first and foremost, affected by the
esthetics of the product. This can sometimes be a naive approach, as was
demonstrated most dramatically in 1849 in London, when people consumed water
from the cholera-contaminated Broad Street well because of its preferred taste
(Okun 1996). More recently in the United States, the Louisville Kentucky
treatment plant had to respond to major customer dissatisfaction when geosmin
and 2-methylisobomeol (MlB) odors affected the tap water (Song et al. 2000). In
contrast to these naturally occurring and non-health-threatening compounds whose
origins are in algal growth in open reservoirs, the ever-increasing inventory of
anthropogenic compounds entering our environment poses serious health threats
to our drinking water supplies. Methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MtBE), for example, is
H. Rubin / P. Nachtnebel / J. Fuerst / U. Shamir
Preserving the Quality of Our Water Resources
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002