Achieving safe drinking water - risk management based on experience and reality

摘要

Over recent years there have been a number of high profile water quality incidents in the developed world that have drawn attention to the safety of our drinking water supplies and how we are managing our systems. An analysis of these and other waterbome disease outbreaks reveals some important themes about the underlying causes of outbreak failures and some broader issues about the role of drinking water quality monitoring for the protection of public health. Experience has shown that waterbome disease outbreaks in affluent countries almost universally demonstrate that the outbreaks were eminently preventable and, in most circumstances, the solutions for assuring safety from the risks of drinking water are not complex and rely not so much on implementing stringent water quality standards, as on improved system management and operation. Given these themes, assuring drinking water safety requires a commitment to a comprehensive approach to risk management, one that focuses on prevention and better measures of control extending from catchment and source protection through to the consumer. There is a growing international consensus moving towards this strategy for assuring safe drinking water, which provides the prospects of making water even more safe than it currently is most places in the developed world.