Community Safety

With concerns that natural disasters and terrorism could compromise water treatment facilities, safety for local communities is of the utmost importance.

MIOX is dedicated to making your water and community safer, so you can drink — and breathe — a little easier.

Safer Neighborhoods

Since many water treatment facilities are located adjacent to day care centers, schools, subdivisions and businesses, safety is an important consideration. The MIOX process eliminates the transportation, handling, and storage of hazardous water disinfection chemicals like chlorine gas and concentrated bleach (sodium hypochlorite).

MIOX products use only salt and electricity to generate a dilute disinfectant solution that is below any threshold limits for hazardous materials.

In contrast, while chlorine gas has been used successfully for over 100 years to eliminate diseases in drinking water, it is a pressurized poisonous gas that could be released in large quantities, causing serious injury and even death upon inhalation. In fact, chlorine gas was used as a war gas during World War I and is heavily regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Moreover, it is a potential terrorist target. Although the safety record for chlorine gas is admirable considering its rate of use, tragedies continue to occur daily with accidents at water treatment facilities, train or tanker truck wrecks, and other disasters that cause additional loss of life due to the toxic nature of the chemical.

Many utilities have converted to purchasing bulk quantities of sodium hypochlorite in an effort to mitigate this hazard. In general, sodium hypochlorite is considered to be safer, but it still poses the potential for a toxic release, particularly when spilled or inadvertently combined with other chemicals. Making matters worse, exposure to a heat source can cause spontaneous ignition.

These concerns are eliminated with the on site generation of a dilute chlorine disinfectant. MIOX offers the potential to eliminate all of the safety hazards to the public associated with the transportation, storage, and use of either chlorine gas or bulk bleach.

Safer Water

In addition to providing a safer environment, MIOX mixed oxidants provide a water quality that is safer to drink. At the same doses and contact times as conventional chlorine, mixed oxidants have been shown in numerous laboratory studies to achieve a more thorough and more rapid inactivation of a wider range of microbes.

Mixed oxidants have also been proven very effective against the build-up of biofouling that forms inside of water system distribution pipelines and that can harbor harmful microorganisms. By eliminating this biofouling, mixed oxidants remove a potential shelter for bacteria in the drinking water supply.

Chlorination reacts with organics in the water to form what are called chlorinated by-products. Some of these are considered to be cancerous, so the EPA limits the permissible levels to margins considered to be safe. Water utilities that have converted to MIOX mixed oxidants report reduced formation of these cancerous by-products.

Overall, mixed oxidants provide the public with a better quality drinking water via superior microorganism inactivation, removal of biofouling, and reduced formation of chlorinated by-products.