When
Monday, April 6, 2026, at 10:00 a.m.
Amanda Wilson
Assistant Professor
Environmental Health Sciences
University of Arizona
"Advanced Water Purification: Perceptions and Acceptance Among Customers of a Large Urban Arizona Municipality"
Harshbarger 118A-A1
ABSTRACT: Water scarcity is a growing public health threat across the world, especially in the southwestern United States. Many water utilities have a growing interest in engaging customers to understand their familiarity with and acceptability of various water reuse technologies and programs. In this presentation, I will highlight a collaboration with a water utility serving an urban city in Arizona to study customers’ perceptions of advanced water purification (AWP) and their level of acceptability for AWP water for a variety of household purposes. Through online surveys (n=479) and interviews (n=22), we found that a little over a third (36%) of participants report using tap water as their drinking water source. However, 42% of participants said they would be willing to use AWP water for drinking. Themes identified through customer interviews included a desire for more transparent/third party testing of water quality, trust vs. distrust in government and utilities, conflation of filters with all forms of treatment, concerns about chemicals and a desire for individual-level control over AWP water being delivered to one’s residence.
BIOSKETCH: Amanda Wilson is an assistant professor in environmental health sciences in the Zuckerman College of Public Health. She is an exposure scientist and risk analyst with over 60 peer reviewed publications and studies microbial risk assessment, risk-risk tradeoffs (a decision that increases risk in one outcome to avoid risk increases in another), risk perception and community engagement. She is especially interested in tradeoffs between sustainability practices, such as water reuse, microbial and chemical risks and respiratory health tradeoffs related to chemical disinfectants in built environments. Her research is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, American Lung Association, Arizona Board of Regents and U.S. Army. She is a 2024 alumna of the Academies of Engineering, Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering program and was awarded the Joan M. Daisey Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the International Society of Exposure Science in 2025.