Full Description

The leading cause of consumers' dissatisfaction with tap water quality is chlorinous taste and odor. There is also a direct correlation between water quality aesthetics and consumer perception of safety. These flavors have lead to increased purchasing of point-of-use and point-of-entry (POU and POE) treatment devices and bottled water. The bottled water market alone now totals 3.4 billion gallons annually in the United States at a cost of up to 1,000 times more than tap water and is increasing at a rate of approximately 10% per year. With growing competition from alternative drinking water source and treatment providers, utilities are increasingly concerned about consumer dissatisfaction and the resultant increased purchasing of POU/POE devices and bottled water. Further complicating this picture are the differences in consumer sensitivity from region to region. Besides other taste and odor compounds, the ongoing exposure level of the consumer as well as the actual concentration in the water effects consumer sensitivity. Utilities need to understand cultural and regional perceptions of chlorinous flavors in drinking water if they are to improve customer satisfaction in this regard. This project is a fact-finding study aimed at better quantifying public perceptions about chlorinous tastes, tap water quality and how they impact customer choices with respect to tap water alternatives such as bottled water and POU/POEs. This study focuses on public perceptions about chlorinous taste from both a subjective and objective viewpoint. The project approach translates into several main tasks: summarize existing literature data on chlorinous tastes in tap water; identify specific US markets for detailed study which are representative of various regions; collect physical data from each market utility; analyze chlorinous taste and odor perceptions demographically and geographically on a national scale using telephone surveys; survey national and international utility managers; and, identify detectable levels of chlorine and chloramines in tap water across the surveyed utility markets. Includes 5 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 06/01/2001 Number of Pages: 17File Size: 1 file , 420 KB