Safety of water disinfection : balancing chemical and microbial risks

Proceedings from the First International Conference on the Safety of Water Disinfection. Chemical disinfection of water may have negative health effects, possibly outweighing the advantage of being cost effective. The conference dealt with the balance between health risks from disinfectants and the risks from waterborne diseases, both in the developing world and in the industrialized world. The book opens with an introductory chapter outlining the global context of drinking water contamination and disinfection. The seven sessions of the conference are covered in a separate chapter each and a final chapter with summaries of all the sessions. Themes in the sessions were: the perspectives for the conference; pathogenic contaminants; treatment for control of pathogenic contamination; disinfectants and disinfection by-products; treatment for control of water disinfection by-products; risk characterisation and quantification; and 5 case studies, with a synthesising chapter on balancing the risks. The conference concluded that waterborne diseases have serious health implications in all parts of the world, which makes drinking water disinfection necessary. Chlorine will continue to be the most widely used disinfectant since there is no conclusive scientific evidence of chlorine posing a significant risk to human health. On top of that, alternative disinfectants may not be feasible for developing countries.