A Case for Adoption of Industry-Wide Application of Solar Disinfection of Packaged Drinking Water Before Distribution in Nigeria

Abstract

The study makes a case for adoption of an industry-wide application of solar disinfection (SODIS) in the disinfection of packaged water at the production stage. To do this, 60 samples, comprising 12 brands of bottled water and 18 brands of sachet-packaged water were randomly purchased from street vendors in Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria and investigated. One sample was hidden from sunlight while the other sample was exposed to a day of sunlight before the two samples were subjected to microbial analysis for the determination of total coliform (TC) using the method of multiple-tube fermentation technique (MPN). Results show that 63% of packaged water vended in Nsukka is not fit for consumption. The risk of contamination is about 44% higher in sachet water when compared with bottled water (relative risk = 1.44). Exposing packaged water to a day of sunlight reduces the risk of consuming contaminated water by about 97% (relative risk reduction value = 0.97). Advocacy of industry-wide application of SODIS may hold the key to ending widespread contamination of packaged water and the resulting life-threatening illnesses that have decimated the population of developing countries.

Keywords

• Diarrhoea;
• genotoxicity;
• packaged water;
• solar disinfection;
• total coliform