HOW SAFE IS SATCHET WATER IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ?

The EPA recommended daily water intake is 2.5 liters per person per day. In a developing countries like Nigeria where there exist epileptic water supply services, the medium income populace has resorted to the use of sachet water popularly known as "pure water" for their daily drinking water needs.
The quality of some of these satchet water cannot be guaranteed.Some producers of the sachet water use underground water without subjecting it to any other purification. This may appear to be relatively clean, but due to lack of proper sanitation practices by their workforce during packaging of these sachet water along the production line in their facilities, and also their storage medium -PVC water tanks which most times are not routinely disinfected- can serve as a breeding ground for microbial water contaminants like Staphylococcus aureus, Lactobacillus brevis, Salmonella , and Escherichia coli .These practices results in production and sale of contaminated sachet water expecially to medium income families.
In order to ensure that at household level that the satchet water that your family consume is safe and free of these microbial contaminants.
Boiling the water is a quick and efficient method to kill the microbiological contamints.

One satchet of water is about 60 cl. In a bag of sachet water you have 20 sachets making a bag have total volume of 12 litres of water, this can serve a family of four person per day. Empty all the satchets into a cooking pot and boil for 3 minute, allow to cool and store in a clean container with a lid.
Reference:

1. Water disinfection for international and wilderness travellers.
2. Bacteriological Quality of Water Stored Exteriorly in Storage Tanks
   (I.O. Sule, T.O. Agbabiaka and A.V. Akomolafe)