Taste and odour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Taste and odour of drinking water are important aesthetic parameters rather than health related parameters. That is, they relate to how water tastes or smells rather than how safe water is to drink.

Tastes and odours in water can be caused by many things, such as inorganic or organic compounds. One of the more common sources of an off-taste comes from blue-green algal growth in a source water reservoir. The blue-green algae produce compounds such as MIB or Geosmin, which impart an earthy taste to the water, a taste that can be detected by humans at very low levels of about 10 nanograms per litre (0.00000001 grams per litre). Water can also smell like rotten eggs due to high levels of hydrogen sulfide.