Resources on water quality, public health and water safety from the World Water Day - UN Water website

The UN-Water website's World Water Day 2010 section, provides access to a range of informative, educational and advocacy material on water.

The documents and publications section includes a range of documents related to water quality, drinking water quality and public health, and water safety planning and management including the safe use of wastewater for agriculture and aquaculture.

Documents on water quality include:

• Frequently asked questions on water quality: Provides a brief introduction to the definitions of water quality, the state of water on the planet, the factors that influence water quality, the impact of poor water quality on health, the measures that can be undertaken to prevent water pollution such as international agreements on water quality.
• Clean water for a healthy world - Addressing water quality challenges and solutions: An advocacy guide and action handbook: Aims at explaining the purpose of the World Water Day with the help of presenting facts and figures on the importance of water quality and the key challenges faced in maintaining water quality globally.
• Water quality reader: Provides basic references for easy reading and information on the most relevant and latest UN publications on water quality.
• Water quality terms/glossary: Provides explanations on all terms related to water quality.
• How to protect water quality - You can make the difference: Provides guidelines on actions that can be undertaken at the individual level spread awareness about water quality and advocate at the policy level for better laws and services to restore and maintain water quality.
• Water quality facts and statistics: Provides the recent facts and figures on the global state of water quality and factors that have led to deterioration in water quality throughout the world.
• Clearing the waters - A focus on water quality solutions: This is the executive summary of  the document that discusses the possible solutions and actions that need to be undertaken to improve water quality and prevent further deterioration in the quality of water resources throughout the world.

Documents on drinking water quality and public health include:

• Water for Health - WHO guidelines for drinking water quality: Highlights the linkages between water and health and provides guidelines for maintaining the water safety and quality from a public health perspective.
• Health based targets: Describes the role of health related outcomes or targets that can be used as indicators for assessing the safety and quality of water and risk assessments on water quality.
• Small and safe - Investing in small community water supplies will reduce waterborne disease outbreaks and overall costs: Emphasises the importance of local efforts to manage water safety and reduce the adverse health impacts of poor quality water on the people.
• Water safety plans - Managing drinking water quality for public health: Discusses the Water Safety Plan approach to managing drinking water quality for maintaining health.

Documents on water safety planning and management include:

• Water Safety Plans - Resources to support implementation: The Water Safety Plan (WSP) manual provides step-by-step guidance on developing and implementing WSPs.
• Think big, start small, scale up: This provides a road map to support country level implementation of water safety plans.
• Guidelines for the safe use of wastewater, excreta and greywater in agriculture and aquaculture: Highlights the new approach that informs programme managers and engineers responsible for wastewater treatment to know how to use the recommended methods and procedures to design wastewater use systems that do not adversely affect public health.
• Key issues in the safe use of waste water and excreta in aquaculture: Provides a basis for the development and implementation of health risk assessment and management approaches (including standards and regulations) to address hazards associated with human waste-fed aquaculture.
• Exposure reduction in the use of excreta and greywater in agriculture: Provides guidelines to maximize public health protection while at the same time optimizing beneficial use of the nutrient resources in excreta and the nutrient and water resources in greywater for agricultural production.

Videos and Pictures

The video and pictures section of the website, contain images conveying water quality issues and coverage of water day events from across the globe.