Abstract
It is well established that the use of synthetic material in water pipes significantly affects the quality of domestic water, especially trace organics that are leached through with the flow of water. In the present study, the migration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from water pipes manufactured of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) has been investigated using static laboratory conditions and in residential areas. The contact of deionized water with various PVC pipes for three successive test periods of 24, 48, and 72 h duration has been made. Twenty water samples were collected from houses within Medina Al-Munawarah residential area and were analyzed by using solid phase extraction, followed by high resolution gas chromatography with flame ionized detector (GC-FID). The presence of carbon tetrachloride (CTC), toluene, chloroform, styrene, o-xylene, bromoform (BF), dibromomethane (DBM), cis-1,3-dichloropropane (Cis-1,3-DCP), and trans-1,3-dichloropropane (Trans-1,3-DCP) was initially confirmed. The most frequent contaminants found were DBM, CTC, and toluene that were monitored in 55%, 50%, and 45% of samples, respectively. The levels of CTC, Cis-1,3-DCP, and Trans-1,3-DCP were found to exceed the World Health Organization (WHO) limits in 50%, 20%, and 20% of samples, respectively. The migration test indicated that nine of the targeted contaminants occur in a double distilled water sample incubated in pipe in laboratory level experiment. This implies that these components are more likely to migrate from PVC pipe in home plumbing systems network.
Highlights
Contamination of drinking water by chemicals can occur at several stages of its journey from source to tap, and to user [1,2]
A previous study showed that ethyl-tertbutyl ether (ETBE), methy-tertbutyl ether (MTBE), and TBA leached from plastic pipes affects the quality of water [9]
The results disclosed that the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as carbon-tetrachloride, chloroform, toluene, styrene, xylene, bromoform, DBM, Cis-1,3-DCP, and Trans-1,3-DCP exist in the analyzed samples at inconstant levels
Summary
Contamination of drinking water by chemicals can occur at several stages of its journey from source to tap, and to user [1,2]. The most commonly used plastic pipes are polyvinylchloride (PVC), cross-linked polyethylene (PEX), and polyethylene (PE) pipes that can leach organic chemicals with harmful health effects and cause water quality to deteriorate [3,4]. These include oxygenated-compounds ethyl-tertbutyl ether (ETBE), methy-tertbutyl ether (MTBE), and their degradation product tertbutylalcohol (TBA), as well as degradation products of antioxidants, such as 2,4-ditertbutyl phenol (DTBP) and BTEX Previous studies on 35 organic contaminants in European water found that the concentrations of the contaminants were up to 4 μg/L [13,15,16]
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