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When Your Drinking Water Suddenly Turns Green




When Your Water Suddenly Turns Green
Water turns green
On 8 July, 2019 NAFDAC issued a public alert on some lots of a particular batch Eva table water produced by Nigeria Bottling Company(NBC) that have turned green, although NAFDAC also have published another statement on the same green Eva Bottle Water giving the general public confidence on the quality of Eva Bottled Water produced by NBC. One thing NAFDAC did not do is to make their findings public, it is a confidential report that can only be requested since their finding may not demaging and of no threat to the general public, but, what really may be wrong with those lots of eva bottled water, why is the whole batch not affected or why is the entire production for that day not affected, with these questions and more we will be discussing in the next paragraphs to try know the possible cause of the problem.

What can be responsible for this unusual occurence?

When water turns green, whether treated water or untreated water, pond water or bottle water, what should come first to the mind of a scientist or a producer or water treatment analyst or a regulator is micro organisms, and among the micro organisms, the first suspect should be green algae. Although some people have suggested chemical contaminants with their primary suspect as copper, but, copper from science do not make water turn green but blue, since the colour of copper is blue. From scientific studies only green algae can turn water into green, algae are ubiquitous micro organisms and have been detected severally even in well treated water. Do we say there is a treatment failure as some people have suggested? Some suggested activated carbon filter failure, this is not correct as carbon do not deal with micro organisms, neither is there is a complete water treatment failure.

Sources Of Contaminants

Treated or untreated water usually contain micro organisms due to their ubiquitous nature, and algae is not an exception to this nature, it can be introduced into water undergoing treatment, before or during or after treatment, another possibility is during packaging for bottled and sachet water. Even when we have a closed system of water treatment, it will only reduced exposure to micro organisms not total elimination, even the personnel in charged are a good source of micro organisms if their personal hygiene is very poor, especially personnel in bottling section, the containers(preforms and caps and sachet, etc) are good source of contaminants, likewise the filling machine, in this section the best that can be done is to reduced to the lowest minimum exposure to micro organisms not total elimination.

Conditions That Encourages Growth

As earlier discussed algae, the causative micro organism responsible for green colouration of water is ubiquitous, they are found even in treated water, but, there are conditions that encourages their growth in our treated water and which automatically affect the quality of our water

1. Water

Treated or untreated water are good source of nutrients for the grow and proliferation of algae, since most water contain dissolved minerals in them, this in-turns support the growth of algae and other microbes

2. Sun light

The role of sun light in the survival of algae is very vital and cannot be over look, interestingly green algae are photosynthetic micro organisms, when water that contain micro organisms such as green algae are exposed to sun light ,there will be a massive growth of green algae as sun light not only serve as their source of energy but used also for photosynthesis.

Prevention

1. Ensure proper treatment of water for bottle and sachet water

2. Practice and enforce good personal hygiene and good manufacturing practices

3. Avoid exposure to direct sun light, treated water stored away from sun light don't turn green

4. Chlorination after treatment have shown resistance to growth of algae

5. Ozonization of bottled and sachet water too have shown great result in prevention of algae growth during storage, as the ozone sterilized the water

Health Effects
Algae are not known to be poisonous, but, there are some concern about some species of algae that produces toxins, as this toxins when consumed can cause poisoning and sickness.



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