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safety in China
•  Mengjie Liu1,2,
•  Nigel Graham3,
•  Wenyu Wang1,
•  Renzun Zhao4,
•  Yonglong Lu5,
•  Menachem Elimelech
  ORCID:
orcid.org/0000-0003-4186-15636 &
•  …
•  Wenzheng Yu
  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9776-80211 
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Nature Sustainability volume 5, pages 689–698 (2022) Cite this
article
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Subjects
•  Environmental sciences
•  Natural hazards
An Author Correction to this art
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This article has been updated
Abstract
The quality of drinking-water supplies is of fundamental importance
to public health and sustainable development. Here, we provide a
spatial assessment of the tap-water quality across mainland China.
We examine natural and anthropogenic origins of low quality as
well as its association with public health risks. By quantifying key
indicators, including total organic carbon, ionic conductivity and
disinfection by-products (DBPs), we find that precipitation is
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Fig. 1: TOC and ionic conductivity of tap-wat
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Fig. 6: Water-quality improvement by NF.
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Data availability
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=== PAGE 6 ===
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://
doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01911-x
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This work was financially supported by the Beijing Natural Science
Foundation (no. JQ21032, W.Y.), Key Research and Development
Plan of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (no.
2019YFD1100104 and no. 2019YFC1906501, W.Y.).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
1. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Aquatic Chemistry,
Key Laboratory of Drinking Water Science and Technology,
Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Mengjie Liu, 
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Menachem Elimelech
Authors
1. Mengjie Liu
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2. Nigel Graham
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3. Wenyu Wang
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4. Renzun Zhao
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5. Yonglong Lu
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6. Menachem Elimelech
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=== PAGE 16 ===
led the data compilation, conducted the analysis and led the write-
up of the paper. M.L. and W.W. did the experiment. N.G., R.Z., Y.L.,
M.E. and W.Y. reviewed the paper, exchanged ideas and prepared
the final version of the manuscript.
Corresponding authors
Correspondence to Menachem Elimelech or Wenzheng Yu.
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Sustainability thanks Baiyang Chen, Antonio Azara, Xiangru
Zh
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Liu, M., Graham, N., Wang, W. et al. Spatial assessment of tap-water
safety in China. Nat Sustain
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