Is Your Water Really Clean?

Background Information

April 2018

 Whether it be drinking, or cleaning, water is an essential part of life. Due to its reputation for cleaning things, many people believe that water itself is completely clean. This, however, is false as bacteria can be found in almost all types of water, especially if it is not purified. This incorrect assumption is actually quite dangerous, because without the knowledge and understanding of bacteria’s presence within unclean water, someone may drink the water  despite its association with certain health concerns. Common types of bacteria found in water include, E.coli, fecal coliform, Legionella and more. Most waterborne illnesses can be caused by bacteria such as Legionella as it can cause serious health risks if the water is inhaled, resulting in a type of pneumonia called Legionnaires disease. E.Coli and fecal coliform are bacteria’s that can indicate whether the water system within the environment is contaminated. Their presence shows contamination of human and animal wastes which in short term can result in cramps, nausea, diarrhea and more but can lead to long-term health risks such as weak immune systems. With all this said, there is much evidence to prove that bacterial contamination in water can not only pose a threat to the environment but cause serious health concerns for the people that are drinking water. Whether it refers to water within a third-world country or a first-world country such as America, water is a universal necessity that the body requires to survive and when something such as clean or “purified” water is scarce, it can result in more than just a health concern for people.

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An experiment carried out by Frankland and Frankland in 1894 showed that water from rivers, lakes, wells and even distilled water had a growth of bacteria when left in room temperature. Similar observations could be made by other scientists such as Alber, Hinman and Jordan in 1917 along with Tanner and Schneider in 1935. They found the issue of bacteria in water to be concerned from a viewpoint of public health. Much of their experimental work were carried out with tap water that was untreated along with other water samples that were swabbed on plates to determine the dominant colonies that were present when the water was incubated at room and fixed temperatures. Another experiment done by Vreeburg and Hoek in 2017 showed how water quality can change during the transportation through distribution systems of drinking water. They found that the relationship between water temperature and residence time are indicators of water quality as it can lead to microbial growth.

As various research and experiments have been carried out to provide the effects of bacteria in drinking water, our group has decided to provide even further evidence that bacteria can play a role in sources that are deemed “purified.” The question posed is how much bacteria is actually present within the water that we drink why we should not trust certain labels that claim the water is “filtered” or “purified.” The different kinds of water that were used within the experiment included filtered water that is used to fill up bottles, tap water, bottled water that is new along with water that was boiled to become sterile to act as the control.

Conclusion

April 2018

Through this experiment we hoped to determine which type of water gathered (Tap, Bottled, or filtered) had the least amount of bacteria. We applied each type of water to petri dish quadrants, along with a sterilized control, and let the agar dish incubate for 24 hours until we measured it and calculated the percentage of quadrant covered by bacteria the next day. Overall, we found that bottled water had the least amount of bacteria, followed by filtered water, and then tap water. We contributed this to the extensive filtration methods in bottled water, and the less thorough filtration methods for both tap and ‘filtered’ water. The correlation between bacteria coverage and filtration methods allowed us to reasonably infer that water sources with greater filtration had less bacteria, and those with less filtration had more bacteria. The type of bacteria however is unknown through this testing, and further testing may display whether or not the bacteria can have serious health effects on its consumers, who may be completely unaware of its contamination.