الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The quality of drinking water is an important public health concern. Assurance of drinking water safety is the base for the prevention and control of waterborne diseases. In Egypt, the availability of safe, palatable and clean water is a challenging problem. Egypt depends on the Nile River in more than 90 percent of its water needs. The Nile River has two branches; Damietta and Rosetta Branches.
Alexandria is the second largest governorate in Egypt, extending about 32 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north part of the country. The population is 4,984,387 according to 2016 census and reaches up to 6.0 million in summer. Alexandria is an important industrial center as well as an important tourist destination. Alexandria Drinking Water Company (AWCO) is responsible for the operation and maintenance of Eleven Water Purification Plants (WPPs), with a daily average production of potable water about 3.5 million m3/day.
Nowadays, water coolers are found everywhere. They are a source of fresh, cool, pure drinking water. Although initially water coolers were big, clunky old things that were hidden in corners because they looked ugly, modern water coolers are now smaller, stylish machines. Water coolers have found their way into restaurants, clubs, hospitals, mosques, educational places, offices, shopping areas and even on the streets. In Egypt, with nine month of hot weather, water coolers help to combat the dehydrating effects of excessive heat. Drinking water diminishes the effects of heat on the human body and keeps it hydrated.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), water quality should cover four aspects: microbiological, chemical, aesthetic and radiological aspects. These four aspects are covered as well by Egyptian Drinking Water Standards (DWS) established by the Egyptian ministry of health and population. Egyptian DWS include, but are not limited to Turbidity (should not exceed 1 NTU), Fecal coliform (should be absent) and Residual chlorine concentration ≥ 0.5 mg/l after at least 30 minutes contact time at pH lower than 8.
This study is proposed to assess the quality of water from public coolers in order to determine its compliance with the drinking water standards (Egyptian, EPA) and with the WHO guidelines, and to assess the conditions of operation and maintenance of the water coolers (according to public usage and manufacturer’s instructions).
The study was carried out in different premises and roads in Central District, Alexandria Governorate. Water samples were collected from thirty different coolers: (fifteen bottled and fifteen bottle-less) and analyzed in the laboratory of the Environment Health Department in the Institute of Public Health, Alexandria University.
Interviewing observation sheet was filled including the following: location and type of the cooler, its users, owners, source of water, cooler fitting status, maintenance, and finally environmental conditions around the coolers.
In order to cover the administrative divisions of Central district, the thirty public cooler were randomly selected as follows: 63.3 % in Bab Sark, 10 % in Moharm Bek, 26.7 % in Atareen. In addition, they were classified as 20% of the coolers in mosques, educational settings, and shopping centers including restaurants and coffee shops (3 from each type), 16.7 % of the coolers in health care facilities (3 bottle-less and 2 bottled coolers), 23.3 % of the coolers in roads (3 bottle-less and 4 bottled coolers).
As for users of the coolers, people passing in the street were the main users of the majority of coolers (56.67%). For coolers that were near mosques, prayers would be mostly the users of those coolers except for bottle-less coolers which were near to the doors of the mosques where people passing in the street were using them as well. Concerning coolers in health care facilities, patients and their relatives, medical and non-medical staff of the hospital were the users of those coolers except one cooler which was in the administrative section of a hospital where only non-medical staff were the users of this cooler. For coolers in educational places, students, employees and staff of the educational setting were the users of those coolers. Coffee shop customers and people passing in the street were the users of coolers in shopping centers including coffee shops.
As regards to the source of coolers water, it is either mains or bottled water. However, in the present study, even bottled coolers were found to have tap water as a source of its water except for only one cooler.
As concerns the coolers fitting status, 73 % of the coolers from each cooler type were in good status of fitting. First, concerning cooler stability, 6.6 % of bottle-less coolers was unstable, while for bottled coolers, 13.3% were found unstable. Second, some coolers were not fitted well, as was observed in case of 20% of the bottle-less coolers. Third, as for taps fitting, 20% of the bottle-less coolers were having broken or leaking taps, and 6.6% of the bottled coolers had dirty taps.
Concerning coolers maintenance, 47% of the bottle-less coolers were having regular maintenance, while 13% of bottled coolers were having regular maintenance.
Regarding the environmental conditions around the cooler, 53% of bottle-less coolers were found to have good environmental conditions around while this was the case for 80% of bottled coolers.
The lab result of the thesis can be summarized as follows:
For the water samples collected from public coolers some parameters were violating Egyptian Standards for Drinking water criteria law 458/2007. This included turbidity, residual chlorine, ammonia, total heterotrophic count, total coliform, fecal coliform. pH, Solids, Total hardness, calcium hardness, magnesium hardness, chloride, sulphate, nitrate, nitrite and Streptcocces fecalis were complying with the drinking water law 458/2007.
Twenty percent of the bottles-less cooler samples were complying with the turbidity standards and the highest mean were in shopping centers, while 66.7 % of the bottled cooler samples were complying with the standards and the highest mean were in roads.
Forty percent of bottle-less water cooler samples were complying with the residual chlorine WHO guidelines and the highest mean were in roads, While 46.6 % samples