Adoption of practices related to the safe handling of drinking water by women in Punjab

Prior research has shown that most people rely solely on physical characteristics of water. They are also ignorant about the recommended practices to ensure the potability of water. Thus, the present study was conducted with the objective to assess the adoption of recommended practices related to the safe handling of water by women along with the reasons for adoption or non-adoption. Data were taken from 200 rural women of the Ludhiana district by a self-structured interview schedule. The practices of safe handling of water were divided into three practices i.e. quality testing, purification, and safe storage of water. Results reveaed that only 19 percent of respondents regularly tested the quality of their household water once in six months. Nearly all of the respondents had not tested the TDS and pH level of their water due to a lack of knowledge. Seventy percent of respondents reported purifying their water before consuming. People need to be aware of the significance of water TDS level for installing RO purifiers because the use of an RO purifier emerged to be the commonly adopted method of water purification. Boiling was second most common practice of water purification but the chlorination method was unknown to the respondents. Users of plastic water storage containers madeup 77.5 percent of the sample mainly due to ignorance of the ill effects of plastic on health(44%). Lack of information among the respondents was the main barrier to majority of the advised practices being adopted. Thus, there is a need to educate people and it can be done by using a variety of extension strategies, including interpersonal, ICT-based, etc. Additionally, the reasons for the adoption and non-adoption of recommended practices discussed in this study may be useful to future researchers and extension agents in their efforts to increase the adoption of these practices.