Access to safe drinking water is essential to health and is considered as a basic human right and a component of effective policy for health preservation and protection. The importance of water, sanitation and hygiene to health and development is an issue at a national, regional and local level. Regular monitoring of drinking water quality has great public health significance because various anthropogenic effects, such as industrial development and expanding agriculture, are causing increased usage of pesticides and soil treatment. The aim of this study was, for this reason, to monitor the hygiene safety and quality of drinking water using physicochemical parameters in the Central Bosnia Canton from 2012 to 2016. Totally 5 526 samples of drinking water from city waterworks and other water facilities were sampled and analyzed in the given period. In 2012, a total of 929 drinking water samples were analyzed, of which 69 samples (7.42%) were unacceptable. In 2013, a total of 1 020 samples analyzed (33 unacceptable), in 2014 – 980 samples analyzed (7 unacceptable), in 2015 totally 967 samples analyzed (5 samples unacceptable) and in 2016, 947 samples analyzed (2 unacceptable). Given that the city waterworks and other water facilities are under regular sanitary-technical supervision and are regularly monitored for physicochemical quality, this study has shown that the number of unacceptable drinking water samples has tended to fall each year.
