Abstract

Introduction: Water treatment by membrane methods such as reverse osmosis is used by people in the region that the quality of drinking water is not suitable. The low quality of water in Abadan city is resulted in the use of water treatment centers with reverse osmosis (RO) systems and distribution of water by portable tanks over the city. In this study, the microbial quality of product water supplied by the treatment centers and portable water tanks was examined.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the water treatment centers and portable water tanks over six months (summer and autumn 2012) in Abadan city. A total of 159 samples were taken and examined by the standard procedures. The parameters of E.coli, coliform, TDS, EC, pH, residual chlorine and turbidity were measured in this work.

Results: The results showed that 2% of water treatment centers and 5% of portable tanks were contaminated by E.coli microorganism. The residual chlorine and turbidity of water samples were also undesirable in the 92% and 87% of the tested samples, respectively. But, the results of the EC, TDS and PH analysis of the water samples showed that the quality of these parameters were in the range of the national and international standards.

Discussion and Conclusion: Despite more microbial contamination of water in the portable water tanks toward the water treatment centers, the statistical analysis did not show the significant difference between them (P-value>0.05). But, due to the high microbial contamination observed in the portable tanks, the adding the disinfectants into the water tanks and educating the portable tanks operators to rise of their awareness can be effective in reducing the secondary bacterial infections.