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Humans use water every day for a wide range of purposes and an important consideration when using water is its quality. Water quality is important to consider as environmental waters generally contain a variety of dissolved solutes, dependant on many factors both natural and anthropogenic.

In this introductory lesson, water quality is introduced as a concept and multiple themes in water quality science are discussed. The importance of water quality will be investigated, by looking at the impacts of water quality upon human health, ecosystem health and socio-economic situations. Additionally, as different water types can be affected by different water quality concerns, types of water will be explored, with a particular focus on the distinction between groundwater and surface water. Water quality guidelines and standards are designed to direct water quality management with an emphasis on reducing health impacts of water that is used for drinking. Water quality guidelines and standards will be discussed, looking at their use and examples of standards from various countries.

This three-part lesson to introduce water quality includes:

Part A on establishing what water quality is and the importance of water quality;

Part B on different water types on Earth, focusing on surface and groundwater; and

Part C on water quality guidelines and standards, which are a key component of water quality management in many countries.

The chemical, physical and biological characteristics of water are continually changing throughout the water cycle and through interactions with the environment.  One such change that can occur is the contamination of water which negatively effects water quality. Contamination can be chemical, microbial, or radiological and these all have different causes and impacts. Contamination in this lesson will be focused on providing an overview of especially chemical and microbial pollutants and sources.

Contamination can be broadly categorised to generally arise from two main sources: natural and anthropogenic (human-related). Naturally, water can be contaminated from interactions between water and the environment such through water-rock interactions which can release dissolved solutes into water. In contrast, anthropogenic activities can lead to water contamination arising from, for example, industrial waste or faecal contamination. Both natural and anthropogenic pollutant sources will be discussed within the lesson to provide an overview of key contaminants that impact water quality.

This three-part introductory lesson includes:  

Part A on the contamination of water, by establishing what contamination is and the different types of contamination (chemical, microbial and radiological);

Part B on selected natural/geogenic sources of chemical pollutants in water; and

Part C on selected anthropogenic (human) related pollutants in water.

Water quality assessment includes the process of evaluating the physical, chemical, and biological nature of water (or selected relevant parameters). Whilst there are many reasons for water quality assessment, a dominant purpose is to ensure that water systems are protected, and to enable the initiation of corrective measures if problems. In this lesson water quality assessment will be introduced by discussing what it is and why it is used to support management of water quality.

Water quality assessment is broad and there are many different approaches based on project objectives.  Some assessments may only focus on one parameter for a short period of time, whilst other assessments may look to monitor water over a long-term basis for a range of parameters. In this lesson, we will investigate why different approaches may be used. Additionally, we will provide a very brief overview of laboratory and field-based analytical approaches. Other selected considerations (e.g. representativeness of sampling) will be introduced.

Groundwater arsenic pollution has been commonly referred to as the ‘largest mass poisoning in history’ and is responsible for many thousand premature deaths annually (National US Research Council, 1999, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK230893/). Arsenic disproportionally affects some of the poorest people on the planet, including large populations in South and Southeast Asia. This lecture will give a brief synopsis of the global distribution of arsenic in groundwater and its importance. Arsenic occurrence in groundwater is thought to be caused by four predominant mechanisms and in shallow aquifers of South and Southeast Asia, the most common of which is likely the reduction of iron (oxyhydr)oxides (for example: Anawar, 2011, https://doi.org/10.3390/w3041050). We will be describing how this mechanism works and some of the geochemical controls on this, before looking at a study from Central and Southern Myanmar, where levels of high arsenic have been reported in some locations especially in the Ayeyarwady Delta (Pincetti-Zúniga, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeochem.2020.104535).

The World Health Organization estimates that around 30% of the world’s population do not have access to a safely-managed drinking water service (WHO, 2019; https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water ). Drinking water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource and it will only become under more stress with a changing climate, onset by global warming. The remediation of surface and groundwater can increase drinking water quality and security – here we examine selected ways in which this can be improved.

Improvements to water quality may require appropriate remediation selection and management (which in some cases may simply involve changing to a safer source). We will explore the factors which should be considered in the selection of an appropriate strategy, as well as some methodologies which have been used for the purpose of remediation selection. The final mini-lecture will focus on water safety plans, a method of targeting drinking water safety through robust risk assessment and risk management approaches.

Mining can have detrimental impacts both environmentally and socially if mining activities and waste products are not managed adequately.  These impacts can occur anywhere that mining activity occurs, including in Myanmar, where a complex geological history has given rise to significant mineral resources. These mini-lectures will give an overview of mining in Myanmar and explore selected chemical hazards that can be associated with the extraction of minerals. Particular focus will be given to acid mine drainage, a major worldwide problem which can have complex environmental consequences.

The use of community science approaches in scientific research has increased in recent years.   Community science involves volunteers in scientific research, where volunteers may contribute towards various parts of research such as data collection or data analysis. Community science is used as it can provide a mechanism for knowledge exchange on topics such as water quality and it can also provide benefits to scientific research. In this lesson community science will be explored by establishing what it is, why it is used, how it can be used and some key challenges.

Following from an introduction on community science and its use, an example of a water quality based community science programme will be provided. The example is a community science project based in Patna District (Bihar, India) in which a groundwater quality survey was undertaken in collaboration with local schools and universities, with volunteers responsible for the collection of water samples.  This community science project was the subject of Sam Addison’s MPhil work (supervisors Prof David Polya and Dr Laura Richards) and associated with the NERC-DST Indo-UK Water Quality Programme FAR-GANGA (www.farganga.org; NE/R003386/1 and DST/TM/INDO-UK/2K17/55(C) & 55(G))2018 – 2021 to Polya et al).

​This two part lesson includes:

Part A on an introduction to community science and its use in scientific research; and

Part B on a case study example of community science used in water quality research in Patna, Bihar, India.