AWWA JAW10942

The difficulty of assessing whether consumers find the taste of delivered water offensive was addressed in the Netherlands by requesting the aid of a large panel of consumers for one year. The perception of the panel resulted in identifying a means of complying with revised World Health Organization guidelines stating that drinking water should not be offensive for most of the consumers served. The consumers were more tolerant of detected tastes in water than were small panels of in-house tasters. Considering the increased reliability of taste evaluations, this method could be used as a routine procedure for larger water suppliers that use potentially contaminated surface water as a raw water source. Includes 5 references, figures.