AccScience Publishing / AJWEP / Volume 12 / Issue 4 / DOI: 10.3233/AJW-150013
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Assessment of Drinking Water Quality in a Community in Malaysia

Anita Devi K1* Surfina A. Saharuddin1 Jack Z. Tan1 Wai Mai Linn1 Shazneen F. Bokhari1
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1 Faculty of Medicine, SEGi University, No. 9, Jalan Teknologi, Kota Damansara PJU 5, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia 47810
AJWEP 2015, 12(4), 11–15; https://doi.org/10.3233/AJW-150013
Submitted: 3 November 2014 | Revised: 25 September 2015 | Accepted: 25 September 2015 | Published: 1 January 2015
© 2015 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Potable water is important for the sustenance and survival of human beings and other living organisms.  The present study deals with the evaluation of the drinking water quality in a city of Selangor, Malaysia and to  compare the quality of drinking water from various households and restaurants by measuring the various physical  and chemical parameters such as dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, nitrate, pH, coliform, turbidity  and phosphate using the water monitoring kit. All samples showed no abnormal values for dissolved oxygen,  biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), turbidity and nitrate. The results showed that the contents of total coliform,  phosphate and pH exceeded the standard. It was seen that out of 100 drinking water samples, 38 samples had  E. coli count exceeding the acceptable limit and hence are considered contaminated. 69 samples were collected  from houses and 28 samples (40%) out of them were contaminated. Among the 27 samples collected from the  restaurants, 10 samples (37%) were contaminated. The results revealed that there was no significant difference  in the quality of drinking water collected from houses as compared to the restaurants (P value = 0.56). The pH  levels for 99% of the samples were within the acceptable range. 1% of the drinking water samples had phosphate  level that slightly exceeded the standards.

Keywords
Potable
drinking water
water monitoring kit
indicators
coliform count
pH
phosphate
awareness
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Electronic ISSN: 1875-8568 Print ISSN: 0972-9860, Published by AccScience Publishing