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Drinking Water Testing and Treatment
Since a safe drinking water supply is essential, treatment of drinking water at the public sector and at the home-level receives a lot of attention. Much research through NIFA and the Land Grant System is being conducted to determine the effectiveness of various drinking water treatments and to develop new treatment techniques.
Water Testing
NIFA Research is being conducted to develop new methods for testing drinking water quality.
Accomplishment: Research
at the University of Arizona has
improved the methodology for determining the presence
of viruses 
in
drinking water. This method will help establish health risks
and assess new drinking water
purification techniques.
Example: An electrochemical
biosensor for the rapid
detection of Cryptosporidium parvum in
drinking water is being
developed at
Cornell University. Water treatment plants, even small facilities,
will be able to monitor the safety of their drinking water more
accurately, faster and more frequently therefore helping to secure
the safety of the nation’s drinking water supply.
Water
Purification
New and alternative water purification methods are being researched through NIFA.
Accomplishment: A project at Florida A&M University, success story) has developed an ultraviolet light method to disinfect drinking water as a safer alternative to chlorination. Potential applications of this method are being explored in rural communities and developing nations.
Example:
A project at North Carolina A&T State University seeks to develop
and test a low-cost
water filtration system using
granular activated carbons derived from underutilized agricultural
by-products. The targeted users for these systems are private well
owners.
Control of Nuisance Contaminants
The control of nuisance contaminants to drinking water is being explored by NIFA researchers. For instance, taste and odor problems associated with drinking water are a pervasive problem for many municipalities that can be rectified by new methods.
Accomplishment: Researchers
at Arizona State University studied
two compounds, MIB (2-methylisoborneol) and geosmin, which
are most commonly cited as imparting unpleasant
musty tastes and odors to
water and originate from blue-green algae and certain fungi.
They explored the use of citral to mitigate
these
taste and odor problems in drinking water. They concluded that
although the citral does mask these tastes and odors, certain
characteristics
of the citral currently make it a non-viable solution for treating
these problems.
The intent of this page is not to catalogue all activities, but rather to indicate the types of research activities in this theme across the U.S.
