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Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar

Deteriorating water quality from aging infrastructure, growing threat of pollution from industrialization and urbanization, and increasing awareness about waterborne diseases are among the factors driving the surge in worldwide use of point-of-entry (POE) and point-of-use (POU) filters. Any adverse...

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Autores principales: Nriagu, Jerome, Xi, Chuanwu, Siddique, Azhar, Vincent, Annette, Shomar, Basem
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5974232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29844504
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26529-8
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author Nriagu, Jerome
Xi, Chuanwu
Siddique, Azhar
Vincent, Annette
Shomar, Basem
author_facet Nriagu, Jerome
Xi, Chuanwu
Siddique, Azhar
Vincent, Annette
Shomar, Basem
author_sort Nriagu, Jerome
collection PubMed
description Deteriorating water quality from aging infrastructure, growing threat of pollution from industrialization and urbanization, and increasing awareness about waterborne diseases are among the factors driving the surge in worldwide use of point-of-entry (POE) and point-of-use (POU) filters. Any adverse influence of such consumer point-of-use systems on quality of water at the tap remains poorly understood, however. We determined the chemical and microbiological changes in municipal water from the point of entry into the household plumbing system until it leaves from the tap in houses equipped with filters. We show that POE/POU devices can induce significant deterioration of the quality of tap water by functioning as traps and reservoirs for sludge, scale, rust, algae or slime deposits which promote microbial growth and biofilm formation in the household water distribution system. With changes in water pressure and physical or chemical disturbance of the plumbing system, the microorganisms and contaminants may be flushed into the tap water. Such changes in quality of household water carry a potential health risk which calls for some introspection in widespread deployment of POE/POU filters in water distribution systems.
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spelling pubmed-59742322018-05-31 Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar Nriagu, Jerome Xi, Chuanwu Siddique, Azhar Vincent, Annette Shomar, Basem Sci Rep Article Deteriorating water quality from aging infrastructure, growing threat of pollution from industrialization and urbanization, and increasing awareness about waterborne diseases are among the factors driving the surge in worldwide use of point-of-entry (POE) and point-of-use (POU) filters. Any adverse influence of such consumer point-of-use systems on quality of water at the tap remains poorly understood, however. We determined the chemical and microbiological changes in municipal water from the point of entry into the household plumbing system until it leaves from the tap in houses equipped with filters. We show that POE/POU devices can induce significant deterioration of the quality of tap water by functioning as traps and reservoirs for sludge, scale, rust, algae or slime deposits which promote microbial growth and biofilm formation in the household water distribution system. With changes in water pressure and physical or chemical disturbance of the plumbing system, the microorganisms and contaminants may be flushed into the tap water. Such changes in quality of household water carry a potential health risk which calls for some introspection in widespread deployment of POE/POU filters in water distribution systems. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-05-29 /pmc/articles/PMC5974232/ /pubmed/29844504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26529-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Nriagu, Jerome
Xi, Chuanwu
Siddique, Azhar
Vincent, Annette
Shomar, Basem
Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar
title Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar
title_full Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar
title_fullStr Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar
title_full_unstemmed Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar
title_short Influence of Household Water Filters on Bacteria Growth and Trace Metals in Tap Water of Doha, Qatar
title_sort influence of household water filters on bacteria growth and trace metals in tap water of doha, qatar
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5974232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29844504
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26529-8
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