A study on quality characteristics of packaged drinking water sold in and around Kanchipuram District Tamil Nadu, India

摘要

Water has always been an important and life-sustaining drink to all living beings. It is rather difficult to imagine wellbeing of life without access to safe drinking water. Water sources without pollution are becoming increasingly scarce today and the drinking water crisis's looming, especially in urban centres. Adequate supply of fresh and safe drinking water is a basic need for all human beings on earth. Communities in urban areas suffer from acute drinking water shortage. To augment this situation many entrepreneurs took to packaged-water business-production and vending and within the task of ensuring its quality arises. This lead to diseases and contamination of drinking water, constitute a major burden on human health and the pathogens involved include a wide variety of viruses and bacteria. Due to difference in size, structure, composition and excretion by humans and animals, their incidence and behaviour in water environmental also differs. The culture of consuming packaged drinking water is spreading rapidly. Water quality is assessed on the basis of calculated water quality indices.