World Health Organization
Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality
The international reference point for drinking-water quality. Establishes guideline values for chemical, microbial and radiological parameters, together with the health-based derivation for each. National standards worldwide are largely derived from these guidelines.
Rights
- Licence
- CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO
- Commercial reuse
- No
- Redistribution
- Yes
- Derivative use
- Yes
- Attribution required
- YesData from World Health Organization, used under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
- Restrictions
- Non-commercial use only, with share-alike on derivatives. Commercial reuse requires separate permission from the publisher.
- Terms last checked
- 23 August 2026
Access and coverage
- Publisher
- World Health Organization
- Geographic coverage
- Global — guidance, not law in any jurisdiction
- Temporal coverage
- 1984 onwards
- Update frequency
- irregular
- Formats
- pdf, html
- Bulk download
- Available
- Registration required
- No
- Cost to Hydrionis
- Free
- Domains
- quality, contaminant, chemistry
Notes
WHO guideline values are advisory. Hydrionis stores them as guidance status and never presents them as a legal limit, nor a national legal limit as universally applicable (spec §28).