AbstractThis study compared the effectiveness and sustainability of five selected cost-effective home water treatment systems in removing Cryptosporidium and Giardia spp. from water sources. These systems included: silver impregnated porous pot (SIPP), biosand filter combined with zeolite (BSF-Z), biosand filter without zeolite (BSF-S), bucket filter (BF) and ceramic candle filter (CCF). The USEPA Methods 1623 were used for the isolation and the detection of the protozoan parasites. The flow rates of the devices ranged between 0.05 and 160.5 L/h. The average turbidity of the environmental intake water samples ranged between 1.47 and 42.93 NTU before filtration and between 0.05 and 14.49 NTU after filtration. The performance of the SIPP in removing the parasites (98–100% of both oocysts and cysts from synthetic water; 96–99.6% oocysts and 96.6–99.8% cysts from the environmental water sources) and in removing viral indicator (97.7–100%) was found to be significantly higher (p < 0.05) compared to other filte...