Drinking Water Quality Investigation in Rural Areas of Yunnan Province

Objective To realize the hygienic state of drinking water in the rural areas in Yunnan Province,the scientific evidences would be provided for drawing the policies about improving the drinking water quality in the rural areas.Methods From August to October in 2006,30 counties were randomly chosen among the monitoring counties,in each county at least 10 sampling points were chosen randomly.The questionnaires were employed and the water samples were collected,the quality of drinking water was tested with the related standard methods.Results 8.94 million people were involved in the survey,48.60% of them used surface water as the source of water.52.18% of people were serviced by the central water supply.The eligible rate in 301 water samples in this survey was 36.88%,those of the samples of surface and underground water were 37.60% and 36.36% respectively.The eligible rate of samples from central water supply was 41.85%,higher than that from non-central water supply(P 0.01).The eligible rates of 14 indexes were higher than 96%,excepting COD,total coliform group and total bacterial count.In the other hand,iron,manganese and arsenic were higher than Chinese standard limits in some survey counties due to geological factors.Conclusion The microbial contamination of drinking water is serious in the rural areas in Yunnan Province and the related improvement should be done in the future to prevent the water borne diseases.