Identifying treatment protocols by translating required fluoride thresholds into site-specific removal requirements in community-based defluoridation systems

Abstract

AbstractCommunity-scale defluoridation systems have been widely implemented in fluoride-affected, groundwater-dependent regions to mitigate and/or reduce the risks associated with exposure to excessive geogenic fluoride in drinking water [1, 2]. Performance of these systems is typically assessed by whether treated water meets a desired guideline threshold concentration (e.g., 1.5 mg/L fluoride, as prescribed by the World Health Organization) [3]. However, translating that threshold into practice requires a site-specific metric: the fluoride removal efficiency needed to reach the target from local source-water fluoride concentrations. Because this requirement varies across sites (and potentia..