Water quality monitoring after floods

Abstract

Safe drinking water is one of the most important conditions for a healthy life. However, in case of disasters and emergencies, the water is often contaminated with various impurities of physical, chemical and/or biological origin. These contaminations can lead to a number of health problems, including various infectious diseases. For that reason, it is important to act preventively, and to perform appropriate treatment and water purification in a timely and urgent manner, depending on the type of pollution. In order to determine the type of pollution and perform the appropriate water treatment, the precondition is arranging certain chemical analyzes and monitoring of water quality through quality parameters. Since our time and economic resources are limited in the first moments of the accident, it is not possible to monitor all the parameters, so we monitor the most important: pH value, amount of residual chlorine, color, turbidity and the presence of pathogens. However, even when the type of pollution is determined, it is sometimes not possible to do centralized water purification immediately. Therefore, it is important to know the methods that can independently, and with the help of some handy tools, be applied in our household (eg. disinfection by boiling water or using some of the chemicals for disinfection; sedimentation, etc.). Using these methods, at least a physiological minimum can be provided for family members in the first moments after the accident, until a centralized purification is performed.

Keywords

• water
• water pollution
• floods
• monitoring
• water treatment