Check-if-apply approach for consumers and utilities to communicate about drinking water aesthetics quality

Globally, consumers judge their drinking water through its aesthetic qualities because tastes, odors, and appearances are readily detectable by untrained consumers. Consumer feedback is critical to the water industry for efficient resolution of aesthetic water quality issues, although consumer descriptions of taste and odor issues can sometimes be unfocused or confusing. A user-friendly approach can facilitate consumer communications to utilities in the challenging task of describing drinking water taste and odor issues. The purpose of this study was to develop a list of taste and odor descriptors and test a novel "check-if-apply" approach to describe drinking water quality. The final list contained 28 individual and/or groups of descriptors. 75 participants tested water samples impacted by various tastants or odorants: duplicate samples of chloraminated tap water, tap water with heptanal, tapwater with 2-methylisoborneol (MIB), tapwaterwith NaCl, bottledwater, and bottledwaterwith CuSO4. Participants used a 9-point hedonic scale (1 = 'dislike extremely'; 9 = 'like extremely') to rate overall liking of each sample, and they used the check-if-apply list to describe the taste or odor. Participants also answered a brief questionnaire and used a 5-point scale (1 = 'very difficult'; 5='very easy') to evaluate their experience using the check-if-apply list. Significant differenceswere observed in acceptability and sensory profile of samples (p-value <0.05). Tap water with MIB had the lowest acceptability mean score (3.43 +/- 1.74), while flavorless bottled water had the highest acceptability mean score (6.23 +/- 1.47). 'Salty', 'metallic', 'chemical' and 'musty/earthy' were the dominant descriptors for NaCl, CuSO4, heptanal, and MIB, respectively. Most participants (81%) found the check-if-apply list as 'somewhat easy' to 'very easy' to use (mean= 3.44 +/- 1.07) and suggested it as a user-friendly lexicon for consumers and utilities to communicate about water quality. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.