Drinking / Potable Water Sources

Drinking water, also known as potable water, is water that is safe to drink or use for food preparation.

Typically, tap water meets drinking water quality standards, even though only a small proportion is actually consumed or used in food preparation. Other typical uses for potable water include washing, toilets, and irrigation.

The World Health Organization considers access to safe drinking-water a basic human right. In order to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to achieve universal access to basic and safely-managed water and sanitation by 2030:

An estimated 2.2 billion people need access to safely managed drinking water, including 884 million currently without basic drinking water services.

Potable water is available in almost all populated areas of the Earth, although it may be expensive and the supply may not always be sustainable. Sources where water may be obtained include: ground sources such as groundwater, springs, and aquifers, precipitation which includes rain, hail, snow, fog, etc, surface water such as lakes, rivers, streams, glaciers, biological sources such as plants, desalinated seawater, or a municipal water supply network.

Parameters for drinking water quality typically fall within three categories: physical, chemical, microbiological. Physical and chemical parameters include heavy metals, trace organic compounds, total suspended solids (TSS), and turbidity. Regardless of the source water and the scale or level of downstream treatment, Forsta self-cleaning filters remove suspended solids, and play an integral role in the sequence of achieving suitable drinking water quality.