Substantiation of Drinking Water Quality Testing Methods of Choice for the Goals and Objectives of Sanitary and Epidemiologic Expert Examination and Health Risk Assessment

Abstract

Summary. Introduction: As the most important environmental factor having multiple effects on human vital activities and health, drinking water often becomes the subject of predicting adverse health effects. With the purpose of establishing quantitative and/or qualitative characteristics of harmful effects of drinking water chemicals for human health, an integral assessment of drinking water quality with subsequent health risk assessment is carried out. It is based on estimating the risk posed by chronic (carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic) exposures that shows probability of developing a disease. Results: Practical activities of departments and institutions of the Federal Service for Surveillance in the Sphere of Consumers Rights and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) on assessing health effects of environmental factors have demonstrated that, even in concentrations equaling their detection limits in quite a number of test methods, most chemical water pollutants pose unacceptable carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks both for the general population and occupational cohorts. Thus, the results of some laboratory methods of testing are inappropriate for an objective human health risk assessment. Conclusions: We describe criteria for selecting methods of the quantitative chemical analysis of drinking water fit for the purposes of sanitary and epidemiologic expert examination combined with a population health risk assessment. The criteria of choice have been elaborated based on the review of regulatory and method documents and results of analytical testing of drinking water quality.