Sources of water supply in Yekaterinburg: «for» and «against»

The work is devoted to the assessment of the quality of drinking water selected from different types of water supply sources. The description of the problem of water pollution is given, the relevance of the research is substantiated. The sources of water sampling are indicated: centralized water supply system, underground water and water machines "Vodorobot". A brief description of the research methods used is given: titrimetric, potentiometric and inversion-voltammetric. The results of determining the following quality indicators are presented: hardness, oxidizability, content of nitrates and heavy metals – copper, lead, cadmium. Excess of permissible values of hardness, oxidizability, concentration of nitrates, lead and cadmium in a number of water samples was found. The possible reasons for the discrepancy of these indicators with the normative values are considered. An explanation is given for the excess of the values of the oxidability of samples of tap and ground water. The negative effects of high concentrations of nitrates and heavy metals on the human body are described. The features of heavy metals contributing to their migration in groundwater are listed. Special attention is paid to the causes of excessive lead content in water samples from water vending machines. It is established that the most common pollutants of the studied waters are organic compounds and lead ions. It was revealed that groundwater containing more than two ecotoxicants is more polluted. The authors note that there is currently no unambiguous answer to the question of a source containing water of satisfactory quality.