|
Water Treatment
Is My Water Safe To Drink?
Often, the first sign of a problem with your drinking water is a detectable change in your water's appearance, color, taste or odor. Sometimes, these are transient and self-resolving problems that cause no harm to you. However, there can be some chemical, especially organic compounds that can be toxic without any obvious clues.
Primary treatment methods used to handle taste, odor, or color problems include filtration, carbon filtration, softening, reverse osmosis, chlorination
and distillation.
|
Problem Signs
|
Possible Causes
|
|
|
|
My water tastes:
|
|
|
salty-brackish
|
high sodium |
|
alkalai
|
hardness, total dissolved solids, low Ph, high metal content, corrosive water |
|
metallic
|
high iron, copper or zinc levels |
|
|
|
|
My water smells like:
|
|
|
rotten eggs, musty
|
hydrogen sulfide,sulfate-reducing bacteria, softwater reactions in electric water heaters, algal bioproducts |
|
earthy, fishy, grassy
|
vegetable and algal biproducts |
|
oily
|
gasoline or oil contamination |
|
methane
|
organic decomposition, gas in aquifer |
|
|
|
|
My water color is:
|
|
|
milky
|
precipitation of carbonates, excessive air, suspended solids |
|
blackish
|
reactions with manganese and possibly iron, IRB/slime bacteria |
|
yellowish
|
presence of humic or fluvic compounds,
iron, IRB bacteria |
|
reddish
|
presence of dissolved or precipitated iron, IRB bacteria |
|
|
|
(Source: Driscoll, 1986; Lehr, 1980) |
|
