The goal of disinfection of public water supplies is the elimination of the pathogens that are responsible for waterborne diseases. The transmission of diseases such as typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, cholera, salmonellosis, and shigellosis can be controlled with treatments that substantially reduce the total number of viable microorganisms in the water.
While the concentration of organisms in drinking water after effective disinfection may be exceedingly small, sterilization (i.e., killing all the microbes present) is not attempted. Sterilization is not only impractical, it cannot be maintained in the distribution system. Assessment of the reduction in microbes that is sufficient to protect against the transmission of pathogens in water is discussed below.
Chlorination is the most widely used method for disinfecting water supplies in the United States. The near universal adoption of this method can be attributed to its convenience and to its highly satisfactory performance as a disinfectant, which has been established by decades of use. It has been so successful that freedom from epidemics of waterborne diseases is now virtually taken for granted. As stated in Drinking Water and Health (National Academy of Sciences, 1977), "chlorination is the standard of disinfection against which others are compared."
However, the discovery that chlorination can result in the formation of trihalomethanes (THM's) and other halogenated hydrocarbons has prompted the reexamination of available disinfection methodology to determine alternative agents or procedures (Morris, 1975).
The method of choice for disinfecting water for human consumption depends on a variety of factors (Symons et al., 1977). These include:
its efficacy against waterborne pathogens (bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and helminths);
the accuracy with which the process can be monitored and controlled;
its ability to produce a residual that provides an added measure of protection against possible posttreatment contamination resulting from faults in the distribution system;
the aesthetic quality of the treated water; and
the availability of the technology for the adoption of the method on the scale that is required for public water supplies.
Economic factors will also play a part in the final decision; however, this study is confined to a discussion of the five factors listed above as they apply to various disinfectants.
The propensity of various disinfection methods to produce by-products having effects on health (other than those relating to the control of infectious diseases) and the possibility of eliminating or avoiding these undesirable by-products are also important factors to be weighed when making the final decisions about overall suitability of methods to disinfect drinking water. The subcommittee has not attempted to deal with these problems since the chemistry of disinfectants in water and the toxicology of expected by-products have been studied by other subcommittees of the Safe Drinking Water Committee, whose reports appear in Chapter III of this volume (Chemistry) and Chapter IV (Toxicity) of Drinking Water and Health, Vol. 3.
Organization of the Study
The general considerations noted in the immediately following material should be borne in mind when considering each method of disinfection. Available information on the obvious major candidates for drinking water disinfection—chlorine, ozone, chlorine dioxide, iodine, and bromine—is then evaluated for each method individually in the following sections. Other less obvious possibilities are also examined to see if they have been overlooked unjustly in previous studies or if it might be profitable to conduct further experimentation on them. Disinfection by chloramines is dealt with in parallel with that effected by chlorine because of the close relationship the former has to chlorine disinfection under conditions that might normally be encountered in drinking water treatment.
