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Regulations Establish National Standards for Water Quality
Author(s) -
Burke Michael E.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8833.2004.tb10675.x
Subject(s) - safe drinking water act , waterborne diseases , water quality , environmental planning , business , public health , water industry , potable water , environmental health , environmental protection , environmental science , water supply , environmental engineering , medicine , ecology , nursing , biology
This article discusses the history of water quality regulations as documented over the course of 90 years in Journal AWWA. Before 1914 there were few standards or guidelines and treatment objectives were simple, “make the water palatable and treat surface waters to eliminate outbreaks of waterborne disease.” By the turn of the previous century, the use of filtration following by disinfection was found to be successful at controlling waterborne disease. In 1942, the U.S. Public Health Service adopted the first set of National Standards for drinking water quality. The environmental movement of the 1970s, and the advent of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), changed the industry forever. In addition to setting enforceable standards, the SDWA provided states with primacy funding to implement the regulations. The article discusses regulatory actions taken in response to outbreaks of waterborne diseases from microbial contaminants, and chronic health effects from long‐term exposures to low levels of environmental pollutants in the air, food, and water. The article states that the 1996 SDWA reauthorization created a number of new programs to ensure the continued safety of drinking water, which were promulgated in an attempt to provide a more holistic approach to the regulation of drinking water. As for the future, the article predicts more specific regulations on contaminants, and changes in the way potable water is treated to meet specific health objectives while nonpotable water would receive less treatment.

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