Water quality considerations

Abstract

In the field of public health, as well as in that of protection of freshwater systems, the progress of scientific knowledge has led to a proliferation of quality standards that is all the more incomprehensible to the general public which, having for a long time been outside decision-making circles, has continued to use aesthetic and organoleptic criteria to assess this quality. Moreover, the many different types of possible standards are conflicting and may have unintended effects. There are standards for the processes to be used and standards for the results to be achieved, which can be classified as output standards and input standards. The persistence of public health practices and the closely related tradition of assimilating the risk, in order to eliminate it, lead to deadlock, possibly due to the incoherent demands from the general public. It is far more urgent to move towards an environmental engineering approach, where a procedure of collective apprenticeship of the water qualities required for various uses and for conserving ecosystems, making democratic discussion possible, may permit the establishment of overall management of the resources and risks.