China's drinking water sanitation from 2007 to 2018: A systematic review

Regular monitoring of drinking water in China is carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at all levels and some articles were published for the public to understand the status of drinking water. However, these published articles were limited to small areas and reported almost exclusively in Chinese. In order to give the public a comprehensive understanding of the situation of drinking water sanitation in China and provide specific directions for ensuring drinking water safety in the future, we review the sanitation status of drinking water in different regions of China from 2007 to 2018, the changes over time and the factors affecting drinking water quality by means of systematic review for the first time. Our results show that the quality of drinking water in China has shown an upward trend from 2007 to 2018. The qualification rate of urban thinking water (85.51%) was much higher than that of rural drinking water (51.12%), and theft season (56.93%) was higher than the wet season (50.54%), and the terminal tap water (59.88%) was higher than the outlet water of waterworks (55.87%). In addition, the regions with low qualification rate of water quality in China were mainly distributed in several southern provinces, such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Hainan, etc. What's more, the qualified rate of the three microbiological indicators was the lowest, all below 85%. All the results indicate that the sanitation status of thinking water in China is unsatisfactory, and the biggest risk affecting water safety is microbial pollution. The central and local governments should work hard to improve people's drinking water quality and continue to strengthen the treatment and supervision of drinking water, especially in rural areas and undeveloped southern areas. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The quality of drinking water in China has shown an upward trend from 2007 to 2018, with urban drinking water qualification rate (85.51%) much higher than rural (51.12%), dry season (56.93%) higher than wet season (50.54%), and tap water (59.88%) higher than waterworks outlet water (55.87%). The regions with low water quality qualification rates were mainly in southern provinces like Yunnan, Guizhou, and Hainan. The lowest qualification rates were for microbiological indicators, all below 85%. Overall, the sanitation status of drinking water in China is unsatisfactory, with microbial pollution posing the biggest risk.