The Necessity of Water Treatment for Safe Water

The importance of water treatment to make water safe for human consumption.

By now you have probably already turned on your taps to brush your teeth and wash your face without giving the safety of your water supply much thought. And why should you really? In America we are lucky to have the cleanest supply of available water in the world only a turn of the tap away. But even a clean supply of water isn't an automatic given. All water has to be treated in order to be safe for human consumption and that means a water treatment plant for most community water sources.

In order to make our community drinking water safe from bacteria and other small pathogens that can cause E coli, hepatitis and other serious life threatening illnesses, water is subjected to a water treatment process that removes these unseen but deadly visitors.

The first step in the water treatment process is known as coagulation and flocculation. This basically means chemicals are put into the water to neutralize things like dirt and debris and then force the debris to join together into a group known as floc. Floc will sink to the bottom and allow the clear water on top to go through multiple filters that work to further clean it. And finally the end product is disinfected with chlorine to kill any parasites that may have managed to hang on through the earlier filtration process.
Keep in mind that water may look clean and clear and still be swarming with parasites. Just look at the Nile River in Egypt- to look at its waters you would never imagine the amount of parasites that were also using the Nile to sustain their lives. The ancient Egyptians, from the richest Pharaoh to the poorest slave had two things in common— they all depended on the Nile for life and they were all infested with parasites including tape worms that came from the source of life. The very water they bathed in and drank from- the Nile was also the source of making most of them sick their whole lives with water borne pathogens.

The Nile's water probably looked clean to them as they bathed or drank the water and they may never have known where the parasites that infected them came from or if they did, they probably didn't know how to make their water any safer. But even today you don't have to live in Egypt or be an Ancient Egyptian to suffer from the ill effects of untreated water.

People are exposed to water borne illness every day, even in America because they consume water that has not been subjected to the water treatment process to make it safe. That can mean drinking water from a well that may have been exposed to bio hazards or drinking water from a stream or river because you're hiking or camping nearby. Unless you know your water has been treated- don't assume you can tell by looking what's safe to consume and what's not safe.

Article Tags: Water Treatment Process, Water Treatment, Drinking Water, Treatment Process

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