How Hurricane Ike Underscores the Importance of an Effective Water Purification Process

Author：佚名 Source：none Hits：134 UpdateTime：2008-10-19 1:30:38


I'm shocked. I was listening to a radio news story about the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in the south Texas area. In an effort to provide local citizens with clean drinking water, a spokesman was saying that they were adding more chlorine to their water purification process. While you can expect chlorine to kill bacterial contaminants that have fouled the water system due to the hurricane, chlorine cannot be counted on to remove synthetic chemical contaminants that were probably also deposited in the water. Chlorine is a disinfectant. It is not a filter. When you explain water purification, that distinction must be made!

Disinfection

With the landscape of southern Texas dotted with numerous oil refineries it only makes sense that people would be alarmed about the possibility of their water being contaminated by refinery chemicals. Add to that the possible contamination by all types of waste (industrial, medical, etc.) and it becomes apparent that the need to explain water purification can be crucial.

Adding more chlorine to a chlorine-based water purification process has the potential for making a dangerous situation even worse. While it may be able to prevent water-borne diseases like typhoid and cholera from erupting, chlorine has serious drawbacks that are going to be magnified with increased doses in the water.

Chlorine leaches heavy metals, like lead, as it flows through the aging plumbing systems of many homes. Lead is poisonus to humans.

Chlorine also creates chloroform gas in the vapor of a bathroom shower. And who knows what kind of dangerous chemical reactions increased levels of chlorine will have with any of the contaminants that have been introduced into the water as a result of Hurrican Ike.

If you explain water purification based on disinfection, then chlorine is probably going to make up a large part of that explanation.

Filtration

It is apparent that a water purification process that is based on filtration, rather than disinfection, is going to have to be utilized if people want to ensure that the the water they drink, cook and bathe in is completely safe.

When you explain water purification based on filtration, several commonly-used systems immediately come to mind.

Reverse osmosis is a popular system that uses filtration, but usually requires the addition of a carbon filter to make sure that contaminants that are small enough to make it through the reverse osmosis membrane are caught. This water purficiation process is expensive and requires a lot of upkeep. People dealing with the costly destruction of a hurricane may find that a reverse osmosis system is not feasible.

Distillation is another potentially expensive water purification process. It, too, requires the addition of a carbon filter in order to catch all the contaminants that distillation is unable to remove. Ongoing maintenance is another requirement of distillation. The carbon filters must be changed frequently due to continuous build up of potentially harmful bacteria.