PRO-ACTIVELY ENSURE DRINKING WATER SAFETY BY MAKING USE OF WATER QUALITY TESTS
The Magalies Water Scientific Services is a SANAS 17025 accredited laboratory that offers the water industry a wide variety of services in the fields of chemical and microbiological analyses, as well as expert advice on water-related problems. Water supply from Magalies Water is tested every two hours at the treatment plants to ensure compliance to SANS drinking water specifications on turbidity (clarity), stability (pH control) and disinfection (chlorine concentration). This compliance monitoring is done in accordance with SANS 241: Class 1 drinking water standards.

WATER QUALITY TESTING
The Magalies Water Scientific Services Laboratory fuses the specialist knowledge of our team of licensed professionals, including qualified chemical scientists, microbiologists and water-treatment technologists with state of the art testing technology, equipment and instruments. The instruments we use include a Varian inductively coupled plasma spectrometer (ICP), an atomic absorption spectrophotometer and flow injection analysis instruments.

This enables us to offer an all-inclusive suite of services to test water samples for an extensive set of quality parameters, such as unsafe contamination through the likes of viruses, minerals, chemicals, bacteria and organic materials. All these essentially serve to make sure that the water that reaches the consumers is healthy and safe to drink, or suitable for domestic use.

OUR ACCREDITATION
The practical implication of the SANAS ISO 17025 accreditation of our laboratory – is that we have to comply with the prescribed standards. It also means that all our analytical methods and the results that are achieved from it – are on record and traceable to international standards.

To maintain our accreditation, we have to subject ourselves to regular internal and external audits – by independent quality assurance representatives. Our current certificate of accreditation includes chemical, microbiological and toxicity testing.

WATER QUALITY TESTS WE OFFER
Chemistry Laboratories
The chemistry laboratories perform extensive testing in organic and inorganic chemistry to monitor water quality for parameters such as pesticides, disinfection by-products, hydrocarbons, trace metals, surfactants, ions, taste and odour.

Microbiology Laboratories
The microbiology laboratory performs analyses to determine for the presence of indicator organisms (E. coli, coliforms, coliphages etc.) and analyses various sample matrices for an array of pathogens including Cryptosporidium and Giardia.