Safe Drinking Water Research Paper

Safe drinking water is one of the important and basic needs of every person in the world to have healthy life. Safe drinking water should meet all the criteria set to be drinkable. Many people in developed countries are enjoying the good quality water through the centralized water supply system. The arsenic happens to be the major contaminant in groundwater (Alaerts and Khouri 2004) and a number of countries face arsenic contamination and related health hazards (Agusa et al 2006). Every year, millions of people die of drinking polluted water and it is reported that about 1.1 billion people in the globe do not have access to safe water. Consumption of poor quality water can exposes humans to bacterial diseases, metal poisoning and other health

These exposures have resulted in the entry of arsenic into the body by skin contact, inhalation, and ingestion. From the viewpoint of human health, arsenic can be considered a unique contaminant for at least four main reasons. First, effects can be measured in exposed populations, and risk estimates (and, consequently, acceptable regulatory standards) can be derived from environmentally relevant exposures. For many contaminants, risk assessments must rely on animal studies or extrapolations from very high occupational exposures. For arsenic, however, many epidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated health effects, in some cases showing dose–response patterns, within the range of realistic human exposure levels. Second, there are no definitive animal models to represent the effects caused by arsenic in humans. This is due, in part, to the fact that the metabolism and toxicity of arsenic in humans is very different from that in most animal models used in laboratory- based sciences. Third, arsenic is associated with increased risks for a wide range of diseases. To date, it has been linked to high risks of several types of cancers, as well as of diabetes, vascular disease, hypertension, neurological disorders, reproductive problems, and the well-known skin damage. And new effects continue to be confirmed or suspected. Finally, exposure is a global phenomenon and, new exposed populations are constantly being discovered. So, although arsenic exposure is an old problem, but because of its continuity it is also a current one (Claudia