Drinking and other Domestic Uses

This document published by the Arsenic Policy Support Unit of the Government of Bangladesh on the social aspects of arsenic and arsenic mitigation consists of three chapters:

This background paper by WaterAid highlights the challenges involved in achieving clean drinking water supply in rural India.

Water contamination due to arsenic

"Piped dreams". is a report by Lalitha Sridhar, written in November 2003, that examines the issue of quality of drinking water supplied to Indian homes today, and concludes that water quality must become a very serious concern for our public agencies, in order to solve the impending water crisis.

This paper by SOPAC provides detailed information on scientific basis, manufacture and use of H2S paper strip test for drinking water quality, in the context of Pacific Islands, and gives suggestions on how the test can be uti

This manual by the Pan American Center for Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Sciences (CEPIS/PAHO), under the aegis of the World Health Organisation (WHO), provides extensive information on various m

The two documents describe five case studies that highlight some successes and best practices from the Water Supply and Sanitation Department, Government of Maharashtra.

Some new technologies and approaches for improving health through clean water - the work of the Aquaya Institute.
View Slideshow (0.8MB) Part 1 | Part 2

The film highlights the problems and solutions for drinking water in drought prone districts of Tamil Nadu. Ooranis are village ponds that were engineered several centuries ago to harvest rainwater. 

Time: 14mins

Water quality standard sectiion

The water quality standards section on the site of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), contains data on limits/standards of various indicative water quality parameters, such as coliform, pH, dissolved solids, bod etc, for each designated water use (drinking, bathing etc).

Read the standards and also view this file for water quality and drinking water quality standards from www.groundwatertnpwd.org.in

Monitoring of Indian National Aquatic Resource: This article on the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) website, contains graphs indicating the water-source wise national water quality monitoring network data, water quality trend across different parameters (bod, coliform etc), and water quality trend (measured in terms of bod) in various rivers of India.

View the graphs

Environmental standards section

The environmental standards section of the Central Pollution Control Board website, contains more than 40 industry–specific effluent standards, ranging from battery manufacturing to thermal power plants.
Read the industry–specific standards
Under the same section, read through some of the more recently–notified industry– specific standards and some proposed industry–specific standards here
The CPCB is a national body formed to promote cleanliness of streams and wells in the country by prevention, control and abatement of water pollution, and to improve the quality of air and to prevent, control or abate air pollution in the country.
For more info, click here

17 most polluting industries in India

This site provides information on the list of 17 most polluting industries, identified by the Central Pollution Control Board (Ministry of Environment and Forests). The site provides information on the following sections: