Tastes and Odors in Water Resulting
from Industrial Wastes*
C. C. Ruchhoft, Principal Chemist
M. B. Ettinger, Chemist
Sanitary Engineering Division
U. S. Public Health Service
Cincinnati, Ohio
The manufacture of coal gas was described by Samuel Clegg in a
treatise published in London in 1859. Since that time the development and production of gas, coke, and other products from coal has
continuously expanded. Although the first complaints about phenolic
tastes in water are not recorded, these certainly must have followed the
almost simultaneous development of the water-carriage system of sewage
and waste disposal which discharged these wastes into streams and lakes
used for water supplies. The effect of the crude spent-gas liquor leaving the ammonia stills was described by Wilson and Calvert(l)t in
1913 as follows: "The effect of a discharge like this upon a small
stream is disastrous, the water being rendered poisonous to fish and
cattle, offensive and discolored, and unfit in fact for any of its ordinary
uses."
Following the rapid adoption of chlorination of drinking water
supplies(2) from 1908 to 1911, first with bleaching powder and then
with liquid chlorine, consumers soon became acquainted with what we
now know as medicinal, iodoform, or chlorophenol tastes. In the last
thirty years, the water-purification literature is replete with references
to difficulties' encountered with chlorophenolic tastes. Such difficulties
have stimulated research on these problems as illustrated by the publications of Houston(3) at London, Baylis(4) at Chicago, Howard(5) (6)
at Toronto, and others too numerous to mention here.
With the continuous development and expansion of a varied industrial plant and the natural indifference to stream-pollution problems
until emergencies exist, many taste and odor problems caused by industrial wastes have developed in public water supplies. The Public Health
Service(7) reported that in 1940 industrial wastes having a population
♦Presented  originally  at  the   University  of  Michigan   School   of  Public
Health, May 5, 1947.
t Figures in parentheses refer to the References, page 348.
321