[Assessment of human health exposure connected with consumption of water characterized with elevated concentration level of silver released from jug water filter systems].

Silver usually exists in tap water at concentrations which are not connected with human health risk and therefore maximum admissible concentration level of this element was not established in Directive 98/83/EC concerning quality of water intended for human consumption. Disinfection of water based on generation of silver or silver compounds by electrochemical process could led to the increase of concentration of this metal in disinfected water up to level of 0.050 mg/l or higher although it should be underlined that this type of technology is not used in Poland. However in the case of application of bacteriostatic agents based on silver salts, e.g., in jug water filter systems consist of cartridges with activated carbon modified by silver compounds, this element may migrate into purified and further consumed water (applied also for preparation of coffee, tea, soup and dilution of concentrated juices) in amounts which provide essential part of daily dose of silver taken orally by human. In this work the results showing the concentration levels of silver released into purified water in the case of application of jug water filter systems with cartridges consist of activated carbon modified with silver compounds and ion exchanger were presented. Study was performed according to British Standard BS 8427:2004 which describes requirements in respect to the performance of jug water filter systems used for the domestic treatment of drinking water The concentrations of silver in challenge water purified by jug water filter systems were determined using validated method of determination of silver by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry technique (ICP-OES). In accordance to type of jug water filter systems applied grand mean of silver concentrations achieved during whole cycle of exploitations of product (including possibility of filtrations of 100 l of water) were in the range 0.0022 mg/l-0.0175 mg/l, which is not provided essential human health risk.