Search Topic: I am interested in finding out more about contaminants in American big city water suppliers.
Based on the search above, do the options below use search strategies correctly? Could they be improved?
Search A:
“big city” AND water
Search B:
contaminant OR "human activity"
Search C:
contaminant OR pollutant OR toxin
AND
"water quality"
Search D:
"san francisco" OR "los angeles" OR "new york"
AND
pollution*
AND
health
A. Boolean Operators
OR is mORe (joins similar terms) e.g. cognitive OR brain
AND is less (joins dissimilar terms) e.g. memory AND music
Sample Search Using both AND and OR
metabolites OR hydrocarbons
AND
environment
B. Quotation Marks
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
C. Truncation
Use a symbol, the asterisk * is the most common, to look for variant endings of a word