Universal access to safe drinking water is a challenge to the scientific community to which the responsibility is incumbent on developing appropriate technologies. Safe drinking water must be globally available to all communities worldwide. It can be roughly considered that water infrastructure is well developed in urban areas as opposed to rural areas where the infrastructure is either poorly developed or non-existent. Accordingly, the population to be urgently deserved with safe drinking water is the rural one. In this review we are trying to summarize all methods reported in the literature for the removal of iron from groundwater for water purification. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.