Because Water is also Food! Testing Drinking Water - An Overview of National & International Regulations

This year’s World Food Day is celebrating drinking water, because water is food!

Access to clean, safe drinking water is essential for everyone on our planet. However, contaminated water can pose a threat to both human health and the environment. To ensure that drinking water, ground water sources and wastewater comply with applicable regulations, national and international regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), World Health Organization (WHO), and EU, have set official testing methods.

To provide more convenient, while still reliable methods for users, rapid test methods following recognized standards such as ISO and USEPA methods have been developed. These methods provide assured certification of ISO accordance and equivalency to EPA methods and deliver comparable results. Rapid test methods also offer additional advantages in many cases, such as the use of significantly lower volumes of chemicals and sample, which reduce the volume of waste produced and provide more user safety.

Spectrophotometry is an accurate and fast method for testing drinking water and beverages. It can be used for a broad range of applications, including the measurement of specific chemical levels, and the monitoring of drinking water and beverage processes. The Spectroquant^® Prove Spectrophotometer is a reliable option for testing drinking water for various contaminants and is compliant with USEPA and other national regulations.

Safe Drinking Water Act & Clean Water Act – follow the regulation

Adhering to regulations like the Safe Drinking Water Act ensures that drinking water meets quality control and product suitability requirements through regular testing using reliable methods, establishing confidence in drinking water quality, and maintaining compliance with national regulations.

The Safe Drinking Water Act regulates primary drinking water for product suitability by requiring documentation and reporting to ensure adequate quality control. Sensitivity tests using a spectrophotometer for beverage and drinking water analysis provide accurate and rapid results for a range of applications, from specific chemical level measurements to process monitoring.

Reliable testing for safe drinking water: health is the priority

Guarantee your spectrophotometric testing methods are compliant with USEPA and other national regulations when analyzing drinking water for contaminants. We provide test kits for ammonium, chlorine, COD, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, sulfate, and more, that are confirmed to be equivalent to USEPA methods and provide comparable results. On our web page, under products, you can filter for the analyte suitability and choose from the broad list of parameters the one that fits your needs.   

To learn more how to perform the photometric analyses of drinking water parameters in very sensitive ranges, our articles and webinars are available online:

• Article: Nitrate in Mineral and Drinking Water
• Article: Measuring Chemical Oxygen Demand in Water Treatment Facilities
• Article: An Easier, Faster, and Cost-Effective Option for Measuring Total Nitrogen
• Article: Phosphate in Groundwater and Surface Water: A Rapid and Reliable Determination Method Using the Photometric Spectroquant^® Test
• Webinar: Drinking Water Analysis
• Webinar: Analytical Quality Assurance for accurate water testing
• Webinar: Drinking Water Monitoring

Our photometric systems, Spectroquant^® Prove Spectrophotometers, test kits, and standards, offer precision, speed, and easy handling. Our diluted standard solutions for photometric applications in varying concentration are traceable to SRM from NIST and completely ready to use. We supply the most extensive range of ready-to-use test kits, offering innovative solutions and start-to-finish quality assurance, combined with strong technical support.