Understanding water quality
◄Previous: Introduction

# Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

- describe the chemical compositions of natural waters, and explain how and why these compositions vary
- describe the main sources of water pollution, the main types of pollutant and how each type may be controlled
- outline the extent of water pollution in the UK and in selected global locations
- identify the criteria for drinking water acceptability in the EU, and outline the processes used to treat water for a public water supply
- outline how sewage may be treated before discharge to the environment.
◄Contents►Next: 1 Natural waters

OpenLearn - Understanding water quality
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.