ABSTRACT
Water supplies are not pure in the sense that they are devoid of all dissolved chemical compounds like distilled-deionized water but are contaminated by a wide range of trace elements and compounds. In the early days of chemistry, water was known as the universal solvent, due to its ability to slowly dissolve into solution anything it comes into contact with, from gases to rocks. So as rain falls through the atmosphere, flows over and through the Earth’s surface, it is constantly dissolving material, forming a chemical record of its passage from the clouds. Therefore, water supplies have a natural variety in quality, which depends largely on its source.
