Pouring First Drops of Rain, refreshing the whole outside and rejuvenating the inside of us, Comes the Monsoon. Everyone enjoys the freshness & invigorating changes that Monsoon brings. But though pleasing Monsoon can be for us, it’s not innocuous. Heavy Rain, deluge & lightning are frequently experienced threats of the season, Along with some commonly known yet ignored issues such as water-borne diseases.

 

Monsoon & Water Safety:

Pouring First Drops of Rain, refreshing the whole outside and rejuvenating the inside of us, Comes the Monsoon. Everyone enjoys the freshness & invigorating changes that Monsoon brings. But though pleasing Monsoon can be for us, it’s not innocuous. Heavy Rain, deluge & lightning are frequently experienced threats of the season, Along with some commonly known yet ignored issues such as water-borne diseases.

Why water safety matters
In scenario of developing countries as India, waterborne diseases are unwashed. Broken water supply lines, use of lead pipes, storage tanks not cleaned for years, contamination of water, soiled water mixed with drinking water supply line are often seen. These problems are usually disregarded, but these can lead to serious consequences. Industrial wastes, pollutants, climatic changes & dissolved impurities increase the salinity of water & deteriorate the quality of water in sources like rivers, human or natural reservoirs. Tap water supplied to our homes generally comes from municipal water supply system, which contains high degree of impurities and dissolved minerals making hard water. Hard water contains impurities of Lead, Arsenic, Fluorides, Iron salts, Nitrates even pesticides and insecticides.

Scientific research and reports has shown that in India, tap water is contaminated with grievous contents. Pathology of normal (assumed clean) drinking water depicted presence of several Micro-organisms which can annihilate us. Pathology states that tap water can contain microbes such as Bacteria, parasites even viruses which can cause illness like infections, vomiting, abdominal discomfort, diarrhea and dysentery. Microbes transmitted by water are causal agent for some fatal maladies as typhoid fever, cholera, botulism and Hepatitis A. These diseases are hazardous and claims million lives every year all over the globe.

So should we not drink tap water? Is the bottled water safe to drink? Well first thing about the bottled water is that despite of pretty natural scenes bottle may imply,  thirty to thirty five per cent of it comes straight from municipal tap water. Some of that bottled water goes through additional filtering, but some does not. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has researched bottled water extensively and has found that it is “subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water.

But we can overcome these problems, by anticipating a simple phenomenon, Water safety. Water safety, cites to freeing water from any kind of impurity it carries. Water safety is not a very unilateral procedure; the safety or purification process contains many steps. The steps that need to be preceded depend on the type of impurities that are found in the water. This can fluctuate very much for different types of water.

Drinking water treatment is the process of eliminating pollutants from surface water or groundwater to make it safe and palatable for human consumption. An extensive diversity of technologies may be used, reliant on the raw water source, contaminants present, standards to be met, and available assets.

 

Why use a Water Purifier
Basic water cleaning processes are boiling the water, chlorination, filtering & avoiding accidental contamination of drinking water with impure water. We can purify our drinking water by above process to only a certain level, but thorough cleaning of water can only be performed by some specialized procedures as hyper filtration or use of good quality water purifier. As in market a variety of Water purifiers are available, but a good purifier should have certain purifying process to totally purify the water:

Reverse osmosis (RO) or Hyper filtration: It is the most common procedure used in purifier. It is operative in excluding or substantially reducing a very wide array of contaminants, and of all technologies used to treat drinking water in residential applications, it has the greatest range of contaminant removal. Reverse osmosis will allow the removal of particles as small as individual ions.

Ultrafiltration (UF): This is membrane filtration in which hydrostatic pressure of a liquid forces it through a semipermeable membrane. Solutes of high molecular weight do not pass through the membrane, while water and low molecular weight solutes pass through it.

Ultraviolet purification (UV): Ultraviolet purification uses a UV light source (lamp) which is placed in a protective transparent sleeve. It is mounted in a way that water passing through a flow chamber is exposed to its UV light. When germs are exposed to the UV rays, their nucleic acid absorbs the UV light, which then disintegrates the germ’s DNA. The cell is unable to divide. It is now considered dead and harmless.

Total dissolved solids filtration (TDS): Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) are the total amount of solutes, including minerals, salts or metals dissolved in a given quantity of water, expressed in units of parts per million (ppm). TDS is directly related to the purity of a given sample of water.  It is also used to assess the quality of water purification systems. TDS filtration removes all these impurities including microbes and hardness of water and renders it fit for drinking and other uses.

Above said techniques are certified and well implemented in purification of water for many years now. In fact, tap water is not consumable without thorough filtering nowadays. Consuming it directly from tap, well or underground water could lead to many health conditions like recurrent gastrointestinal infections and skin rashes. So we must have a good quality water purifier in our home. A water purifier once installed can run for years without hassles & using a purifier at home ensures good health of you and your dear ones. After all nothing is more pleasing than a healthy body.