Approaches to Defining Health Risk Areas Using Quality Indicators of Drinking Water Supply

Introduction: There are currently no generally accepted criteria for ranking territories according to a set of indicators characterizing the quality of drinking water supply, which requires the development and verification of criteria for classifying regions.
Objective: To develop approaches to ranking territories of the Russian Federation based on indicators characterizing the state of drinking water supply and identifying health risk areas.
Materials and methods: We have analyzed tap water quality indicators and characteristics of water supply systems in 15 regions of the Russian Federation included in the Arctic zone and the Northwestern Federal District based on data retrieved from the Federal Statistical Observation Form 18 “Information on the sanitary condition in the region” for 2021. A discriminant and correlation analysis were performed to verify the correctness of area classification.
Results: We ranked the study regions based on 31 tap water quality indicators. The results of the discriminant analysis showed that six regions (Novgorod Region, Republic of Karelia, Arkhangelsk Region, Nenets Autonomous Area, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Chukotka Autonomous Area) were risk areas, 93.3 % of the original grouped observations were classified correctly. Poor chemical indicators of tap water quality in rural areas made a significant contribution to the classification of the regions as risk territories.
Discussion: The selected quality indicators of drinking water supply are appropriate and sufficient for the regional level thanks to their universality for all territories. This fact is also confirmed by a strong statistical inverse correlation between the proportion of the population provided with quality tap water from centralized water supply systems and the calculated total score characterizing the state of drinking water supply.
Conclusions: The study proved correctness of the choice of indicators characterizing the quality of drinking water supply for the classification of regions. Ranking of territories will allow developing management solutions to improve the quality of drinking water and identify regions that need priority measures aimed at preserving health of the population.

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