Production Control as a Component of Drinking Water Quality Monitoring

Abstract

Summary. Introduction: In order to conduct a more precise and objective assessment of drinking water quality in the centralized cold water supply systems, it is essential to increase the coverage of population with laboratory control. It is therefore expedient to consider the possibility of using production control data collected within the drinking water quality monitoring system and including them in statistical reporting forms of Rospotrebnadzor for subsequent accounting when assessing the implementation of the Russian Federal Clean Water Project within the National Ecology Project. Our objective was to substantiate requirements for organization of production control of drinking water with considering a further use of its results in assessing drinking water quality. The materials of the research included current regulations and literature data. We applied methods of sanitary and epidemiologic expert examination, assessment and survey as well as methods of systemic and content analysis. Results: To evaluate the supply of the population with high-quality drinking water, it is important to consider not only test results collected within the framework of the federal state sanitary and epidemiologic surveillance but also the results of production control carried out by legal entities and individual entrepreneurs operating centralized cold water supply systems. However, organization of production control and the use of its results is usually associated with such problems as the choice of the most representative sampling points, identification of a sufficient list of controlled indicators, quality of results, etc. Conclusions: Before including the results of drinking water quality production control in the drinking water quality monitoring system, it is necessary to set the requirements for selecting monitoring sites, analytes, frequency of testing, etc. To legitimize the use of production control results, it is important to develop regulations that oblige organizations carrying out production control of drinking water quality to submit their results to Rospotrebnadzor bodies and institutions for their use in comprehensive drinking water quality assessments.