DOI: 10.36347/sasjm.2022.v08i10.015

Pages: 749-753

During the past three years a new trend has been widely spread, represented in the sale of bottled water produced by reverse osmosis, in the city of Benghazi. A cross-sectional descriptive study has been carried out aiming to evaluate the quality of water produced as purified and sold as “bottled water”, under the bacteriological aspects. Fourteen sites of these locations were inventoried by means of search and inspect as related data was not available by concerned authorities on the number of these locations and their conditions of operations. A questionnaire was prepared gathering information including all owners which were catalogues, and one hundred citizens representing all society’s segments and consumers of such water, were equally poled. Study results showed: 1) 7.7% of bottled water samples were bacteriologically contaminated. 2) Lack of awareness and environmental education and the citizens being influenced by rumors and advertisement of outlets’ owners, have all lead 52% of consumers, covered by the study, to decline the use of tap water doubting its purity and safety.