The Evolution of Water Analysis

Nowadays, water analysis is something we take for granted. One click of the mouse, and the internet provides us with up-to-date information on the water quality of the great rivers. Water analysis has caught on significantly in our part of the world, be this in the monitoring of surface water such as lakes and rivers, in controlling the quality of water treatment or in managing processes in purification plants. Nowadays, an abundance of wide-ranging analytical procedures are used in the area of water analysis. To examine how water analysis has evolved over time is also to question what the driving forces behind the development of these procedures has been. In other words, why do we need to analyse water? To answer this question, let us take a look at the history of water and wastewater treatment and examine when and why human beings started to take an interest in water quality.