WHO-standard Drinking Water: Supplying Clean Water in a Complex World
Lack of access to water has devastating repercussions: every drink risks illness, every handwash uses dirty water, and every bath leaves you unclean. For many, this is daily life, despite clean water being a basic human right essential for health, hygiene, dignity, and resilience.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) sets strict guidelines for what it means for water to be clean and safe to drink, but billions of people around the world struggle to access WHO-standard water. As climate change threatens water scarcity and increases water-related hazards, and rising conflict threatens infrastructure and access to clean water, finding sustainable ways to provide WHO-standard drinking water is more urgent than ever.
The Chelsea Group operates in challenging environments across the globe, many of which lack access to clean, safe water. This is where expert water solutions provider, Chelsea Water, can step in. Chelsea Water specialises in providing WHO-standard water and purification solutions that can be easily and rapidly deployed, even in complex, harsh or conflict-affected areas.
Here, we look at what clean water is, and how it can be provided through innovative solutions – even in complex and vulnerable areas.
What is WHO-standard drinking water?
The WHO provides international guidelines for regulating and standardising what it means to call drinking water clean. That includes setting out safe ranges for the following factors:
- Microbial quality: Water may not contain harmful bacteria, viruses, or parasites, as these can cause high-impact infections, like cholera and diarrhoea.
- Chemical safety: Stringent limits on hazardous chemicals, like arsenic, lead, fluoride, and nitrates, protect communities from long-term health risks.
- Low radiation levels: To prevent long-term exposure to radiation, water must show safe levels of radioactive elements like radon or uranium.
- Physical quality: Water should taste clean, be consistently clear and odour-free.
Achieving clean water standards requires rigorous treatment to remove contaminants, but maintaining this process can be challenging due to disruptions from conflict, natural disasters, and climate change.
Water from natural sources requires treatment and testing to produce WHO-standard drinking water.
The challenges of delivering WHO-standard drinking water
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 was created to ensure access to sustainably managed WHO-standard clean water and sanitation for all. However, it remains out of reach for many today.
According to United Nations Water, over 2.4 billion people live in water-stressed countries, with access further complicated by conflict or geographical isolation. There are many complex reasons why communities are left without reliable access to WHO-standard water, which include:
- Political instability: Conflict may disrupt water supply through damaged infrastructure, delayed repairs, and deliberate withholding to exert political control.
- Damaged infrastructure: Water systems are often damaged or destroyed in conflict, by natural disasters, or by lack of maintenance. Repairing these systems is costly and time-consuming, leaving communities dependent on unsafe water for months or years.
- Displacement: Water scarcity is a significant driver of displacement and strains resources in refugee areas, where camps often fall short of the WHO’s 20-litre daily standard per person.
- Climate change: Extreme weather events like droughts and floods worsen water scarcity and strain existing infrastructure in already water-stressed areas.
Conflict and underdevelopment in countries like Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, and the DRC, for example, have left millions without safe water, causing health crises and overwhelming water resources.
Water sources in conflict-affected areas like South Sudan are vulnerable to contamination, either through a lack of infrastructure maintenance or the deliberate use of water as a weapon.
Access to clean water reduces risk of disease, supports recovery, restores dignity, and strengthens sanitation, ultimately boosting community resilience. Chelsea Water believes in developing and providing innovative and easy-to-implement solutions that can help countries and international bodies address these kinds of challenges.
Solutions for complex environments
All of Chelsea Water’s solutions employ cutting-edge technology to filter out harmful chemicals, odours, organic matter, microorganisms, heavy metals, bacteria, viruses and residual pesticides, and are fit for use in complex environments.
Water being tested at a Chelsea Village Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, where Chelsea Water ensures water meets WHO-standards through a custom containerised purification plant.
Their rapidly deployable and mobile solutions include:
Rapidly deployable and mobile:
Chelsea Water’s mobile units are plug-and-play solutions ideal for emergencies and disaster relief. The Chelsea Mini produces up to 1,000 litres of WHO-standard water daily, while the Trailered Purification Plant, towed by a 4×4, produces 72,000 litres per day.
Custom Containerised:
Chelsea Water provides customised containers that produce 10,000 to 20 million litres of WHO-standard water daily for longer-term solutions. Designed for specific raw-water qualities, these modular systems include training for self-sufficient water management, ideal for large-scale sites like municipalities, agriculture, and schools.
Community Drinking Water:
Chelsea Water’s fixed-in-place solution, the Chelsea HydroSafe, provides up to 200,000 litres of WHO-standard water per day to remote or rural areas, for a consistent, reliable supply of clean water. This solution is easy to transport and install, allowing communities to focus on building and developing other essential resources.
Bottled Water Solutions:
Partnering with local enterprises, Chelsea Water bottles its own WHO-standard drinking water for distribution in remote and complex regions.
For more information on how Chelsea Water has already made a difference in complex areas, read this case study on DRC’s Lake Edward region.
Coping with an increasingly thirsty world
Innovative and easy-to-deploy solutions are more necessary than ever as climate change, habitat destruction, and pollution threaten clean water supply and undermine water security. These increased pressures contribute to conflict, migration, and food insecurity in many parts of the developing world.
As conditions deteriorate, communities, governments and individuals will need to form strategic partnerships that can help ease hardships, address water challenges and ensure the fundamental right to clean drinking water is protected.
Visit https://www.chelsea-water.com/ to learn more about Chelsea Water’s innovative solutions.
