Water coolers are popular in office, buildings, commercial stores and streets. The quality of this source of drinking water has the potential to cause waterborne outbreaks. The aim of this study was to determine the quality of water plumbed in coolers from streets in comparison with main water supply in Cairo and measure the efficiency of water treatment plants in the treatment process of River Nile water to exclude its responsibility in the transmission of diseases. Raw water of River Nile, treatment plants, main water supply and water coolers were collected. For each sample microbiological and chemical indicators of contamination were evaluated in order to determine its compliance with the drinking water WHO guidelines and Egyptian standards. In all water coolers samples chemical parameters did not exceed the reference values of the drinking water guidelines except for free residual chlorine and lead concentrations, as 28.6% of water coolers were containing <0.5 mg/l free residual chlorine, 19.1% were containing lead higher than 0.01 mg/l, Microbiological results showed that 14.3% of cooler samples showed a higher levels of Total Bacterial Counts than WHO guidelines and Egyptian standards meaning that some of coolers is not suitable for its purpose and lead to water and money loss unless adopting appropriate routinely monitoring system in order to prevent or to diminish the chances of contamination of this water source.
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