Abstract: Objective To know drinking water quality and safety in rural areas of Hainan province.Methods Ten counties of total 18 countries in the rural areas of Hainan province were selected.And then 10 villages were selected as the monitoring site in each county.The sampling tmie was arranged in the rainy (July to September) and dry season(January to March) in 2009.Results The coverage rate of rural centralized water supply was 74.0% (182/246).The qualification rate of water quality in 2009 was 17.9% (44/246).The qualification rate of surface water was 22.6% (12/53),higher than that of underg round water(16.6%,32/193).The rank of qualification rate of all the monitoring indexes of the water quality was total coliform group (35.4%),total number of bacterial(80.1%),pH (82.9%),Fe (94.3%),Mn (94.7%),turbidity (90.7%),colority (95.5%),nitrate (95.9%),chloride (97.6%),NH₃^- N (98.4%),fluor in (98.4%),and hardness (99.6%).The qualification rate of centralized water supply was 22.5% (41/182),higher than that of rural dispe rsive water supply (4.7%) with a significant difference (P < 0.01).The qualification rate of the water sample in rainy period was 19.2% (24/125),higher than that in the low water tmie.Conclusion Microbiological pollution is the ma in influencing factor for drinking water quality in Hainan province.