Project acronym: Water in ROOFTANK
Project Summary
Palestinians suffer from a severe shortage of drinking water, especially during the long summer months. To partially overcome this problem, most of the people store the water in roof-top storage tanks. The tanks are mostly made of plastics. BPA, a common polymer additive present in many plastic products is reported to cause cancer, asthma, infertility, hyperactivity, and reproductive system irregularities. The risk that these chemicals leak out from the storage tank into the water is usually not noticed by the people easily. The project aimed at monitoring the migration/release of chemical substances from the plastic storage roof tanks to the drinking water during storage. The project also targeted to identify the chemical additives used during the manufacturing of the tanks and to review regulations for RSL for plastic containers and storage. This project is linked to the PADUCO-2 project entitled "Managing heavy metals contaminated industrial wastewater from inorganic chemical industries: Implementing cleaner production for sustainability".
Research Objectives
The main goal of this project is to monitor and evaluate the quality of drinking water stored in plastic roof-top tanks and understanding the impacts of the released restricted substances during storage on water quality. The specific objectives of this project include the following:
- Reviewing the existing RSL for plastic tanks and vessels for drinking water (and food) (worldwide and regional. e.g. Turkey) and analyzing the related Palestinian Chemical Regulations for possible improvement and identifying options for updating the existing regulations.
- Characterizing and quantifying the restricted substance release to drinking water and investigating the effect of temperature, sunlight, UV rays’ exposure, age of the tank, polymer type, and tank colour on the level of contamination.
Project Team
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Name : Dr. Maher Al-Jabari University : Palestine Polytechnic University (PPU) Email : mjabari@ppu.edu |
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Name : Dr. Hassan Sawalha University : Palestine Polytechnic University Email : hsawalha@ppu.edu |
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Name : Dr. Eldon Raj Rene Organization : IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education Email : e.raj@un-ihe.org |
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Name : Prof. Eric van Hullebusch Organization : IHE- Delft Institute for Water Education Email : e.vanhullebusch@un-ihe.org |
Research Deliverables and Outcomes:
Research Category:
Research Summary :
Palestinians suffer from a severe shortage of drinking water, especially during the long summer months. To partially overcome this problem, most of the people store the water in roof-top storage tanks. The tanks are mostly made of plastics. BPA, a common polymer additive present in many plastic products is reported to cause cancer, asthma, infertility, hyperactivity, and reproductive system irregularities. The risk that these chemicals leak out from the storage tank into the water is usually not noticed by the people easily. The project aimed at monitoring the migration/release of chemical substances from the plastic storage roof tanks to the drinking water during storage. The project also targeted to identify the chemical additives used during the manufacturing of the tanks and to review regulations for RSL for plastic containers and storage.