en عمومى General پژوهشي Original Article <table align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td align="left"> <p><strong>Background & Aims of the Study:</strong> &nbsp;Lack of access to safe drinking water can lead to undesirable aesthetic problems and adverse health effects such as infectious diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the microbiological quality of the drinking water distribution network in Divandareh City (Kordestan-western Iran).</p> <p><strong>Materials & Methods:</strong> &nbsp;This study was performed in a 12 months period from March 2011 to February 2012. For purposes&nbsp; of drinking water resources quality measurement in Divandareh City,&nbsp; samples from springs, deep and semi-deep wells were analyzed for&nbsp; residual free chlorines, turbidity, total and fecal coliform. The size of samples was 2088 and the sampling was performed according to guidelines of WHO for water sampling. The results were analyzed using the Statistical software SPSS and Excel and for the comparison between average parameters ANOVA test were used.</p> <p><a name="OLE_LINK1"><strong>Results:</strong></a> &nbsp;In 95% of samples, the residual free chlorine was in the range of 0 to 0.5 mg/L, turbidity 0 to 1.8 NTU and total and fecal coliforms 0 to 240 and 0 to 9.1 (MPN/100mL), respectively. According to data analysis, the chlorine residual and turbidity had significant effect on the amount of thermophilic coliforms (<em>P</em>=0.047).</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> &nbsp;High rate of total and fecal coliforms in the drinking water is due to failures in the transport system, lack of sanitation in the water resource, and lack or failure in the chlorination system.</p> Consumer Product Safety, Disease Outbreaks, Drinking Water, Suburban Health Services 73 78 http://jhygiene.muq.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-39&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Nader Yousefi No Tehran University of Medical Sciences Amin Bagheri No Tehran University of Medical Sciences Nezam Mirzaei nezammirzaei@yahoo.com Yes Tehran University of Medical Sciences Mohammad Khazaei No Qom University of Medical Sciences Mehdi Vosoughi Niri No Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences