engleski

Public water supply in the City of Zagreb

Short abstract Safe drinking water is essential for human life. Public water supply system in the City of Zagreb is the system in the Croatia, both in number of consumers, and in the amount of delivered water. This paper presents the results of monitoring of drinking water in the City of Zagreb. SUMMARY Water is the main source of life and civilization. With the development of technology and the exponential demographic growth, the need for water is increasing day by day, but water resources are limited. Although water covers 71% of the Earth's surface, only 2.5% is fresh water. The distribution of water on Earth is very uneven. More than a billion people have no permanent access to safe water. Each year, 15 million people in the world die from unsafe water. Croatia has significant reserves of clean drinking water. Croatia is in the 5th place in Europe and 42nd in the world for the abundance of water resources. The safest way of water supply is public water supply. In Croatia, the water from the public water supply system serves approximately 88% of the population. Public water supply system in Zagreb is the largest water supply system in Croatia and it was founded in 1878. Andrija Stampar Teaching Institute of Public Health conducts water quality monitoring in the City of Zagreb. Institute Laboratories for water testing are fully equipped with modern instruments, professional and technical staff and accredited according to ISO/IEC 17025 from 2003. In the framework of drinking water monitoring from public supply system, 1856 samples were analyzed in 2015. Only 18 samples (1.0%) were non-conforming mainly due to minor microbiological contamination in internal water supply network. According to the results of the water analysis can be concluded that the citizens of the City of Zagreb are drinking safe water.

drinking water; water supply system; monitoring

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