If your home is connected to a municipal aqueduct, the water that passes through your water treatment plant, before being sent to you, meets the criteria of the RQEP. Depending on the size of the systems, water should be tested 2 to 100 times per month, including Escherichia coli bacteria, fecal coliforms and total coliforms1. The presence of these organisms in excess of the regulation automatically results in a boiling advice, a notification to the MDDELCC and the public health direction in your area.
Too often, a new customer or even a regular customer arrives at our premises with a sample already taken from the first bottle found and asks us to do tests. We have seen all kinds of them: a zip-lock bag containing 3-4 metal scales, a plastic bottle cut in half and closed with plastic wrap and elastic, or just an old Aquafina-style water bottle. Unfortunately, this often leads to a refusal to conduct the analyses.
Water cooling towers (CT) are facilities designed to promote the exchange of heat between a fluid, usually water that has been heated by heat recovery in a process of installation, and air. There are different CT configurations, but their principle is similar: to cool a hot liquid by spraying into an air current. Hot water is usually sprayed at the top of the tower before descending by gravity against the current of an air flow and through different structures. These are intended to increase the transition time of the water between the top and bottom of the tower, thus promoting the extraction of more heat. The cooled water is then returned to the system to extract heat again.
In addition to the fact that it can be unpleasant, odours are often an indicator of water contamination. For this reason, it is often recommended to have water tested if a strange smell or a change in the smell or taste of the water is detected.
Many homeowners in Quebec are not connected to their municipality’s drinking water systems and are instead supplied by a well. Whether it is a tubular well (commonly called an artesian well) or a surface well, it is important to ensure that the water provided by the well is adequate for human consumption.
Since 2019, we have heard a lot about lead in the water. This came in response to a decision by Health Canada, which, after a lengthy review of the available scientific evidence, decided in March 2019 to reduce its recommendations to increase the tolerable maximum in drinking water from 10 to 5 µg/L (microgram per litre, or ppb). This is not the first time that the level of lead in drinking water has been lowered; prior to 2001, the acceptable standard in Quebec was 50 µg/L.
