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Testing rainwater collected in tanks using the H2S method
Conference paper   Open access

Testing rainwater collected in tanks using the H2S method

J. Nair, K. Forrest, K. Mathew, R. Gibbs and G.E. Ho
IWA Conference for Water & Wastewater Conference Management for Developing Countries (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 06/11/2001–08/11/2001)
2001
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Abstract

Rainwater harvesting is common practice in many places throughout the world. It is often the only source of drinking water for many remote areas of the developed and developing countries. Rainwater thus collected was found to be susceptible to bacterial contamination and maintaining the quality of rainwater is the interest of the householder. Only an on-site method that is affordable to the householders enables regular checking of this drinking water source. In order to test the efficiency of the H2S method, an affordable and convenient on-site method, rainwater samples were tested from a total of 221 tanks from the households around the city of Perth, capital of, and Collie, a mining town in Western Australia. The general condition and the maintenance pattern of the tanks were assessed through a questionnaire. The efficiency of the H2S method was tested against the presence of total coliform and faecal coliform bacteria, determined by the standard membrane filtration method. The agreement of the results from the H2S method and the standard methods was greater at a coliform count of >10CFU/100mL, which indicated that the H2S method is a suitable method for remote communities and countries where coliform counts greater than 10CFU/100mL is considered as standard for microbial contamination.

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