Glossary

Purified Water (PW)

Potable water Purification Purified water
Illustration

Pharmaceutical water produced from at least potable water as feed, meeting the pharmacopoeial chemical and microbiological purity specifications.

Source · WHO Technical Report Series No. 1033, Annex 3, Good manufacturing practices: water for pharmaceutical use, §4.3 Bulk purified water

Details

If a pharmaceutical water system is the equipment, purified water is the water quality grade that equipment has to deliver. The feed water must at minimum meet drinking water standards, whatever purification method is used has to be qualified, and the water follows the pharmacopoeial chemical and microbiological purity specifications. The corpus includes purified water that did not meet its microbial specification, purified water used as a component of the product with inadequate control of the equipment, and poor temperature control in the purified water generation area. What is examined is not only the test result but whether the point at which the sample was taken represents the actual point of use.

Related sections

Related terms

Real inspection findings

Findings from regulators' inspection documents in which this term appears.

  1. Pharmaceutical water must meet the Purified Water USP monograph, be suitable for its intended use, and routinely tested to ensure ongoing conformance with appropriate chemical and microbiological attributes.
    FDA · FDA Warning Letter · 2023-03-14
  2. Your firm uses PW as a component to manufacture your drug products.
    FDA · FDA Warning Letter · 2022-08-16
  3. In Unit A (building A), the water quality of the purified water (PW) does not meet the specifications for microbial contamination (<100 CFU/ml) for purified water, which poses risks to animal safety and public health.
    EMA · EU GMP NCR (EudraGMDP) · 2026-04-21
See 23 findings whose text contains this term

Counted as of 2026-09-24 — the search you land on shows today's figures, so it may differ slightly.

Source

WHO Technical Report Series No. 1033, Annex 3, Good manufacturing practices: water for pharmaceutical use, §4.3 Bulk purified water

GRM Regulatory Glossary

243 GMP terms in one place

Each term is explained in plain language with its official source. Look it up here whenever you meet a term you don't know.

Browse the whole glossary
Weekly Newsletter

New GMP inspection findings, every Monday

Every Monday we email the week's new inspection records from the FDA, EMA, Health Canada and MFDS, with a short summary of the week's regulatory news. We'll also let you know when the site gains new features. Unsubscribe any time with one click.

See recent findings first

Sent every Monday · a confirmation email follows when you subscribe · unsubscribe from the footer of any email.