Desalinated water hygiene and scientific bases for its investigation

In view of the increasing scarcity of fresh water reserves in many countries of the world, a thorough hygienic evaluation of the different methods of desalinating highly mineralized underground and sea waters for economic and drinking purpose becomes indispensable. In addition to generally accepted hygienic criteria (favourable organoleptic properties, innocuous chemical composition and epidemiological safety), introduction of supplementary criteria for the assessment of the characteristic of the quality of freshened drinking water is necessary, i.e., its full value in the physiological sense and stability of drinking properties. The necessity of hygienic tests concerned with the study and regulation of the mineral and microelement composition of desalinated drinking water as well as of its microbial composition, structural peculiarities, the so-called "deuterium number" and the presence of various organic substances in desalinated water was pointed out. A certain degree of priority should be given to the study of the mentioned indices in hygienic assessment of the different methods of water desalination (distillation, freezing out, ion exchange, electrodialysis, inverse osmosis and others).