Abstract：Objective To investigate the hygienic quality of drinking water in rural areas of Shaanxi Province in 2015, and to provide a basis for the planning of rural drinking water safety project. Methods According to the requirement of the National Monitoring Scheme for the Quality of Drinking Water, a stratified random sampling was used to select 1,487 rural centralized watersupply projects in March-October, 2015 to carry out hygienic investigation and water quality analysis. Results The water supply source of the rural drinking water projects was dominated by groundwater (70.34%). The types of water supply included complete treatment (16.21%), precipitation and filtration (30.87%), only disinfection (9.28%) and the untreated (43.64%). A total of 5,366 water samples were collected during the dry and rainy seasons. The qualified rates of finished water and terminal piped water in the dry season were 47.13% and 46.97% respectively, while those in the rainy season were 45.02% and 45.87% respectively. The qualified rate of disinfected water was significantly higher than those of precipitated and filtrated water and untreated water(52.53% vs. 39.23%, 52.53% vs. 47.31%, both P<0.05). The qualified rate of water supply with normal use of disinfectant equipment was obviously higher than those of water supply with occasional- or non-use of disinfectant equipment (57.43% vs. 48.94%, 57.43% vs. 39.07%, both P<0.05). The qualified rates of total coliform group (64.60%) and total bacterial count (87.30%) were the lowest, ant those of fluoride (92.12%) and hexavalent chromium (96.07%) were also lower. Conclusions The qualified rates of drinking water in rural drinking water projects in Shaanxi Province in 2015 were relatively low. Microbial contamination was the main factor affecting the water quality of drinking water in the rural areas. Toxicological indicators like fluoride and hexavalent chromium badly exceeded the national standard.
2018, Vol. 25 
