Potable Water Analysis
Determine pre-treatment water quality

What is Potable / Raw / Feed Water?

Although it is widely known that Purified water and Water for Injection (WFI) are essential in the pharmaceutical manufacturing setting, this purification journey must begin somewhere. Often this journey begins with mains water provided by your local authority. The quality of water provided at this initial stage is often very variable. This variability is based on factors such as: Water source (soil and rock composition affect organic content and hardness) and seasonal differences, to name two. Potable water can also be used for non-critical processes and preparations such as an initial washing step.

Why do we test it?

In order to have full control over your water system it is essential that you determine a start point and build a picture of water quality throughout the pre-treatment stages. In order to do this potable / raw and feed water analysis is an essential part of this control. Although the regulatory requirements for potable water are the concern of the water board, from a pharmaceutical point of view downstream changes can be a resulting affect from input water variances. As a result, there are potable water microbiological and chemical specifications to comply with as defined in the pharmacopoeias.

How can we help assure compliance?

Potable water analysis may require a variety of client specific analysis depending on the regional variation in water quality and composition. Here at Honeyman we provide a wide variety of cGMP wet chemistry techniques such as:

• Conductivity
• pH 
• Nitrates
• Total Organic Carbon
• Heavy metals
• Chlorides
• Sulphates
• Iron
• Arsenic
• Calcium and Magnesium

This is list is not exclusive, enquire now to see if we can help!

This list is not exhaustive but includes tests commonly required by our clients. In addition to this, the microbiological specification can be met using the following techniques:

Total viable count (TVC) via membrane filtration (500cfu/ml limit)

Total viable count (TVC) via pour plate (500cfu/ml limit)