Taking A Step Back: The History of Drinking Water
Did people always have clean and safe drinking water? The answer is no, because clean water has not always been available to the general population. Our collective approach to water has brought us to where we are today.
The individuals (or our ancestors, simply put) who preceded us generally experienced severe illnesses, diseases, and other water-related conditions.
Shortly after the link between those illnesses and the quality of the public water supply was established, concerted efforts were made to provide clean drinking water to large populations. Since then, it has been acknowledged that an external water source is required for drinking.
The Romans constructed water conduits, or aqueducts, for this purpose as early as 312 B.C. Afterward, in the seventeenth century, London developed the New River, a clean-water supply.
However, as populations developed, this would eventually become insufficient to meet everyone's needs. Moreover, before present-day sewage and water treatment plants were established, people greatly improved water quality because of taste.
Unfortunately, we recognize that this is not a precise test for assessing the suitability of drinking water. A few unsafe and harmful agents are bland, scentless, and dry. Soon, people recognized the need for a more precise method for testing their drinking water.
Although ancient records show that water was boiled and filtered through gravel and sand, it wasn't until the mid-nineteenth century that we saw a town providing water through a filter.
Paisley, Scotland, became the principal city to use a filter to supply an entire region with water. A couple of English urban communities adhered to this pattern for a long time, whereas European urban areas adopted some filtration.
However, in 1832, Richmond, Virginia's early attempt to introduce a channel in the U.S. failed due to adverse circumstances.
With the spread of infection and the stagnation of city cesspools, it became clear to individuals that some form of purification was necessary. Sickness became widespread, yet many didn't recognize the link between contaminated drinking water and disease.
Finally, in 1890, William Thompson Sedgwick used bacteriology to demonstrate an association between contaminated water and cholera.
However, in the late 1800s, numerous urban communities in the U.S. began adopting water filtration processes for their city's drinking water. The early frameworks included straining water through sand and gravel to eliminate sediment.
By the early 1900s, urban authorities recognized that slow sand filters could effectively eliminate certain bacteria, particularly the typhoid bacterium.
Moreover, water treatment was perceived as essential. In the mid-1900s, many urban areas began using chlorination to treat their water. This included adding chlorine to the water, which was perceived as unsafe and risky.
The need for water treatment was urgent due to thousands of cases of typhoid fever and dysentery. In 1914, the first federal regulations in the United States were enacted.
Subsequently, during the 1960s, the recognition that modern industrial cycles were polluting the pristine water supply prompted stricter regulations. Thus, the 1972 amendments, largely responsible for our ongoing regulation, were implemented.
The vast majority of the regulation of our drinking water is governed by the Clean Water Act (CWA), which was amended in 1972.
As per the EPA, the significant changes made in the CWA include the following stipulations:
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Regulations for pollutant discharges into U.S. waters
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Assignment of pollution control programs to the EPA
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Maintaining existing regulations for contaminants in surface water
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The obtaining of a permit for discharging pollutants into navigable waters
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Funding for sewage treatment plants
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Recognized the necessity for problems related to pollution
Although these strategies have advanced significantly over time, we are fortunate enough to have access to protected, clean drinking water.
We have access to a clean water supply today, thanks to the mechanisms developed by recent innovators.
In this article, we discuss the origins of clean drinking water and the various water purification methods we have incorporated into our daily lives.
The Origin of Clean Drinking Water
People today often take for granted the widespread availability of clean drinking water.
However, people have gone to great lengths since time immemorial to create clean drinking water, and such endeavors even date back to before they discovered how to make fire by scouring two sticks together.
In antiquity, individuals assessed the purity of water by taste, a practice later deemed erroneous. In any case, their persistent efforts to obtain clean, safe drinking water have led to numerous advances in water treatment, making it more effective today.
Authors M.N. Baker and Michael Taras, in The Quest for Pure Water: The History of Water Purification from the Earliest Records to the Twentieth Century, an American Water Works Association book, hypothesize that the pursuit of pure drinking water started in ancient times.
Sanskrit writings and inscriptions in ancient Egyptian tombs and burial chambers document the earliest evidence of water treatment. The Sushruta Samhita, a clinical work from the fifteenth century B.C., references various water therapy strategies.
These techniques include boiling water over a fire, heating water in the sun, plunging a heated iron into water, filtering water through gravel and sand, and using the seeds of Strychnos potatorum and a stone called "Gomedaka."
The walls of the burial chambers of Egyptian rulers Amenophis II and Rameses II, which date back to the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., contain depictions of water that explain the device.
1.1 Purification of Water
The Book of Scriptures, or the Bible, references water purification practices dating to the 12th century.
Accordingly, Moses and the Israelites observed that the water in Marah was bitter. God instructed them to cast a tree into the water; evidently, the water's taste became sweet and good.
Meanwhile, people in Jericho complained to Elisha that the city's water was "naught," so the prophet cleansed the water by projecting salt into it.
1.2 Drinking Cup
In the 9th century B.C., a Spartan lawgiver developed a drinking cup that could make mud stick to its side. Later, the father of medicine, Hippocrates, developed a device called the "Hippocrates Sleeve," a fabric sack used to strain boiled rainwater, thereby eliminating hoarseness and malodour.
Both the Greeks and Romans had exceptionally elaborate water-filtering systems. Their water treatment experts employed various strategies to produce clean drinking water, including Diophanes's method of adding macerated laurels (or other shrubs) to the water and Paramus's technique of soaking a sack of pounded grain and bruised coral.
Thus, in the eighth century A.D., an Arabian chemist named Gerber proposed using wick siphons to purify water.
1.3 Desalination
In 1671, Sir Francis Bacon published his thoughts on desalination in A Natural History of Ten Centuries. This is due to the experimenter's history of sanitation, as he encountered an individual who successfully purified seawater by passing it through 20 vessels.
Furthermore, this experimenter assumed that if he dug a hole close to the seashore, he would get pure water after the seawater had passed through the sand.
Likewise, an Italian physician, Lucas Antonius Portius, provided details of numerous sand-filtration methods in his works titled Soldier's Vade Mecum. Through this, three pairs of sand filters (each had an upward-flow filter and a downward-flow filter) where water would enter after it had been strained through a perforated plate.
1.4 Filtration as the "Preferred" Water Purification Method
Between the 17th and 18th centuries, filtration became the preferred water purification method for many communities, and this was only the beginning, as more town officials considered the possibility of providing clean drinking water to all their residents.
In fact, in 1703, French researcher La Hire proposed to the French Academy of Sciences that each Paris family should have a rainwater cistern and a sand filter. His framework incorporated a covered, elevated cistern, which could prevent moss growth and freezing.
1.5 First Purifying Plant
Thanks to La Hire's initial undertakings, Paisley, Scotland, presented the world's first municipal water purifying plant a century later. This plant used gravel filters and concentric sand to treat water, which was distributed by horse and truck in 1804.
However, in 1827, Robert Thom invented slow sand filters installed in Greenock, Scotland. James Simpson devised a comparative framework two years later, which became widely used worldwide.
In any case, slow sand filtration required extensive land and couldn't keep pace with rapid population growth.
The rapid sand filtration strategy was introduced in the United States in the 1880s. This system incorporated fundamental elements of Thom's system, such as reverse-flow washing and a false bottom.
However, they used mechanical agitators to loosen debris and water jets or backwashes to clean filter media. As such, rapid sand filtration included pretreatments, such as coagulation and settling to reduce the sediment load on the filter, and charcoal filtration to further improve taste and odor.
More importantly, during the 19th century, it became apparent that water quality significantly affects health.
Around the mid-century, London's municipal authorities observed that cholera deaths had declined following the introduction of water treatment systems. In response, London passed the Metropolitan Water Act of 1852 to ensure that all water supplied to the city would be filtered.
Finally, they recognized the importance of providing clean drinking water to the population.
After the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, water worldwide became increasingly contaminated. At the same time, new and more refined water treatment systems were being developed to ensure that everyone would have safe, clean water to drink.
Present-Day Water Purification Methods
All credit to the historical undertakings of drinking water treatments, we now have all these present-day methods to use:
Boiling
Boiling water is perhaps the cheapest and safest method of water purification. However, water sources and/or distribution channels may be contaminated.
Parasites, germs, and other harmful microorganisms may reside in your water supply, and you may not even notice them because they are not visible to the naked eye. Still, the effects of water contamination can be life-threatening.
In this method, clean water ought to be brought to a boil and left on at a rolling boil for one (1) to three (3) minutes.
For individuals living in high-elevation regions, it is recommended that water be heated or boiled for longer than at lower altitudes. This is because water boils at lower temperatures in higher elevations.
Moreover, boiled water should be covered and left to cool for a few minutes before drinking. For water drawn from wells, allow it to settle before filtering it through clean water for use.
Filtration
Filtration is one of the most powerful approaches to purifying water, and when using appropriate media, it's effective at removing compounds from water.
This strategy utilizes chemicals and physical cycles to filter water and make it safe for human consumption. Through filtration, large compounds and small, hazardous toxins (which can cause disease) can be removed using a simple, rapid process.
Filtration doesn't drain all the mineral salts, so filtered water is "healthier" than water decontaminated using other techniques. Ultimately, it is an effective water purification method that utilizes a chemical absorption process to remove unwanted compounds from water.
Compared with reverse osmosis, filtration is considered more effective for the selective removal of trace contaminants such as chlorine and pesticides. Another factor that reduces the cost of filtration is that distillation and reverse osmosis require little energy. In retrospect, it is a much more economical water purification method because little water is lost during the process.
Distillation
Distillation is a water purification method that uses heat to separate pure water from impurities as vapor. This technique is powerful, as scientific data show that water has a lower boiling point than various impurities and illness-causing components found in water.
To do this, water is heated until it reaches its boiling point. It is then left at the boiling point until it vaporizes. The vapor is then guided into a condenser to cool, and immediately thereafter turns into pure, safe drinking water.
This method removes bacteria, microbes, salts, and other heavy metals, such as lead and mercury.
Chlorination
Chlorine is a powerful chemical that has long been needed to treat water for home consumption. It is a powerful water purification technique that kills germs, parasites, and other disease-causing organisms in ground or tap water.
Water can be purified using chlorine tablets or liquid chlorine. As an off-the-shelf water disinfectant, chlorine is relatively inexpensive yet effective.
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