Evaluation and strategy for improving the quality of desalinated water

Seawater desalination is practiced in many coastal countries, which is accepted as clean water by the general populations. The untreated seawater reported high concentrations of bromide (50,000 – 80,000 µg/L) and iodide (21 – 60 µg/L) ions, which are reduced to non-detectable levels during thermal desalination while the concentrations of bromide and iodide ions were reduced to 250–600 µg/L and < 4–16 µg/L, respectively during reverse osmosis processes. During the treatment and/or disinfection, many brominated and iodinated disinfection byproducts (Br-DBPs and I-DBPs) are formed in desalinated water, some of which are genotoxic and cytotoxic to the mammalian cells and possible/probable human carcinogens. In this paper, DBPs’ formation in desalinated and blended water from source to tap, toxicity to the mammalian cells, their risks to humans and the strategies to control DBPs were investigated. The lifetime excess cancer risks from groundwater, and desalinated and blended water sourced DBPs were 4.15 × 10^–6 (4.72 × 10^–7 – 1.30 × 10^–5), 1.75 × 10^–5 (2.58 × 10^–6 – 5.25 × 10^–5) and 2.59 × 10^–5 (4.02 × 10^–6 – 8.35 × 10^–5) respectively, indicating higher risks from desalinated and blended water (2.56 and 4.51 times respectively) than groundwater systems. Few emerging DBPs in desalinated/blended water showed higher cyto- and genotoxicity in the mammalian cells. The findings were compared with safe drinking water standards and strategies to produce cleaner desalinated water were demonstrated.