Water Quality of Water Vending Machines in Gombak, Selangor

Abstract

Water vending machines (WVMs) are commonly found in public areas and it is an alternative for public easier to buy drinking water with much cheaper price. However, majority of the WVM in Gombak, Selangor were not registered under Ministry of Health (MOH) and have raised a concern on the drinking water quality from these machines. The aim of this study was to assess the physical, chemical, microbiological parameters from the drinking WVMs, as well as to perform environmental assessments of 20 water vending machines (10registered, 10 non-registered water vending machines) in Gombak, and to compare the results between registered and non-registered WVMs. According to the results for water quality tests, one registered WVM violated pH and total coliform standard (10%). On the other hand, five non-registered WVMs (50%) were found not aligned with the MOH water quality standard. A number of four out of five of non-registered WVMs (80%) were found to violate pH standard and one non-registered WVM (10%) was violating total coliform standard. Environmental assessment also showed that registered WVMs have better machine conditions as well as cleaner surroundings compared to the non-registered counterparts. The findings in this study showed that non-registered WVMs have higher tendencies to violate any water quality parameters as well as poorer WVM conditions and surroundings. These factors could pose health threats to the public who consume drinking water from these machines.