For the 1.1 billion people worldwide who do not have
access to improved drinking water supply, point-of-use
(POU) water treatment with sodium hypochlorite
(NaOCl) is proven to reduce the incidence of diarrheal
disease. However, NaOCl dosage recommendations for
both household water treatment and disaster response
water treatment vary significantly. In this study, 106 water
samples from a variety of improved and unimproved
sources in 16 countries were tested to ascertain whether a
standardized NaOCl dosage regime could be developed.
Results indicated that for household water treatment
with NaOCl alone, a dose of 1.875 mg/L
NaOCl proved effective in 86.6% of samples with
turbidity < 10 ntu and a dose of 3.75 mg/L NaOCl
was effective in 91.7% of unimproved sources with
turbidity of 10-100 ntu. On the basis of test results, it
is also recommended that POU chlorination programs
adopt a proposed criteria for a free chlorine residual
of < 2.0 mg/L 1 hour after NaOCl addition and > 0.2
mg/L after 24 hours of storage. Includes 29 references, tables, figures.