Tainted elixir!

by Carol Aloysius

Is the water we drink fast becoming a cocktail of deadly contaminants? The question isn’t rhetorical. Recent news stories about alleged gasoline leaks and effluent discharge into rivers make the question pertinent, as do some of the edgy water experience related here.

*Quintas (real name withheld) a resident of Wattala: “I usually drink water only from my filter. But when the water ran out, I drank it straight from the tap and to my horror a dead lizard flowed out of the water into my glass. I threw it away in disgust and make it a point to carefully inspect the water each time I open the tap”.

*Housewife Sumathi also from Wattala: “For the past few weeks my water, which is pipe borne has been having a terrible taste. When I inquired from the Water Board, someone told me it may be due to excessive chlorine. Then I heard about a pipe line that had burst nearby and all of us in the neighbourhood are now convinced some of the uncleared garbage near our houses at Kunuella could have seeped through into the water. Urgh!”

*Anula, a long-time resident of Panadura: “The water I drink has become distasteful. A PHI who visited the area said it was probably from the chemical effluents that are killing the fish in the Bolgoda River and the plants in the mangroves at Kalutara”

*Jeyamini, a resident at Nuwara Eliya: “I live on the summit of a hill close to a petrol station. All the petroleum waste from this company is dumped into the streams and lakes below. I used to get clean spring water to drink from the spring near my house. But lately the water has changed in colour and I have found a lot of dead fish. So I no longer drink or bathe in it. Instead my family has to trudge a long distance where we collect water for drinking from a community stand pipe for estate workers and have our baths there as well.”

*Shirancee who lives in a shanty garden in the heart of Colombo: “My two under five year olds have had frequent bouts of diarrhoea lately. I always boil the water I give them, but water is very scarce these days. Since the community toilet is also close to my kitchen, the PHI told me tests had shown that some faecal matter had entered my water system”

Water pre-requisite

Supply of safe drinking water to all is one of the most important pre-requisites for healthy life. Access to potable water is also our fundamental right. Yet that right is being violated with impunity and quite frequently.

With dwindling land resources and limited dumping sites, factory owners are now allowing their toxic effluents to flow into rivers, lakes, springs and even open spaces in highly residential areas. Along with factory chemicals, the water ways are being increasingly sullied with other equally harmful toxins such as petroleum chemicals.

Case in point is what is happening with Coca Cola manufacturing plant in Kaduwela accused of allegedly contaminating the Kelani River, the main water source to the city of Colombo. The company is being blamed for an oil leakage into the Kelani River.

A few days ago, the Central Environment Authority (CEA) suspended the Environmental Protection Licence (EPL) granted to the company. This follows an August18 warning from the CEA that it would take legal action against the plant owners, if they were found guilty of polluting the Kelani River.

Chairman CEA, Prof. Lal Mervyn Dharmasiri, acknowledged that the licence had been temporarily suspended, and the company had been instructed to adhere to conditions specified by the CEA if the suspension order is to be lifted. He said the lab testing conducted at the Gampaha District branch of the CEA had found that the water in the Ambatale reservoir, which supplies water to households in Colombo and the suburbs had also been contaminated with oil, resulting in a disruption of services.

Conflicting opinions

Allegations of contaminants increasingly infiltrating the supply of drinking water island wide are widespread, but the National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWS&DB), insisting the tap water in Sri Lanka is 100 percent safe for drinking. Addressing the media at the Government Information Department recently NWS&DB Chairman, Karunasena Hettiarachchi, is reported to have asserted, “The National Water Supply and Drainage Board is always dedicated to providing 100 percent purified drinking water to the general public. Drinking water (tap water) is purified under World Health Organization standards.”

He is also quoted as saying that the National Water Supply and Drainage Board daily collects 60 water samples exclusively from the Colombo area to check the quality of water. “So no one should worry about the quality of normal drinking water (tap water) provided by the National Water Supply and Drainage Board. We are also in the process of preparing regulations to monitor all bottled water,”

The Water Resources Board (WRB), which presently operates under the Ministry of Irrigation and Agriculture, however takes a different view. In its report published in the British Medical Bulletin of June 2015, it says “ …Although, Sri Lanka is not considered as a water scarce country, in particular to groundwater, quantity, quality and availability of groundwater has started to deteriorate due to increasing human activities. This undesirable groundwater deterioration relates to land subsidence and seawater intrusion; coincides with urban development and excessive groundwater extraction. WRB is dedicated to research and training people to address these groundwater issues in the country.”

Guidelines

The basis on which drinking water safety is judged is national standards or international guidelines. The most important of these are the WHO Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality, which Sri Lankan health authorities adhere to.

As they point out, while fatalities and morbidity due to water borne disease is at a new low in Sri Lanka due to improved low cost inputs such as Jeevani available at very affordable prices to all mothers, water borne diseases among young children is still prevalent to unacceptable levels in certain areas, specifically the estate sector.

Nor is the quality of drinking water uniform, with some regions in the North Central Province, for example, having higher levels of arsenic and heavy metals, while others as in Kalutara having high levels of fluoride in the water.

Sources

So what are the most common sources of water? According to the Water Resources Board report, “Drinking water is derived from two basic sources: surface waters, such as rivers and reservoirs, and groundwater. All water contains natural contaminants, particularly inorganic contaminants that arise from the geological strata through which the water flows and, to a varying extent, anthropogenic pollution by both microorganisms and chemicals. In general, groundwater is less vulnerable to pollution than surface waters.”

Man made contaminants

In addition to natural contaminants, there are a number of man-made contaminants. These, health officials say, are more deadly because not all of them are easily identifiable.

They include discharges from industrial premises and sewage treatment works, agro chemicals, which are easily identifiable and therefore controllable, as well as run-offs from agricultural land and from hard surfaces, such as roads, which are not so obvious, or easily controlled. A recently emerging healthy hazard is contamination of water from petrol service stations, particularly when chemicals are disposed of without proper care.

Head of the Poisons Information Unit, National Hospital, Dr Waruna Gunathilaka agreed that an alarming degree of toxins such as lubricants, engine oil and other cleaning detergents used by petrol service stations are entering the water resources making drinking water unsafe.

“There are no regulations relating to how these pollutants should be disposed of. It is a very serious issue, and warrants immediate attention, as its adversely affects the environment, aquatic life plant life, animal life and human life, and could be the cause for the sharp rise in Non Communicable diseases including cancer in recent years,” he warned, urging the Ministry of Health to take remedial measures to minimize this environmental and health hazard.

Recent studies have shown that petroleum based chemicals have been found to cause accelerated ageing, early fertility, hyperactivity and neurological disorders as well as cancer. He said the Poisons Unit had received several complaints about the haphazard disposal of petroleum based chemicals, especially from the Central Province, where petrol stations are found on top of hills, and used contents dumped down the slopes to the lakes and rivers below.

“These are toxic substances containing heavy metals, which when they come into contact with our waterways pose a serious health risk”, he warned, adding “Once the containers have been used, they are also dumped in open spaces including residential areas. This too poses a serious health hazard as people could use them to store various food items”

Gunathilaka also charged that agro chemical barrels were being used to store cooking oil in bulk. “The lids of these barrels are narrow and prevent proper cleaning.

Even the slightest residue when mixed with cooking oil used for frying purposes could have very harmful health effects,” he said, adding that the public needs to be more responsible for their actions, as they are endangering their health with these manmade contaminants.

In short, clean water saves lives because it is a pre-requisite to health. Whether pipe borne, or water from tube wells, springs or lakes or bottled water, what is important is to collectively make ourselves accountable for every artificial pollutant that enters our waterways.

Or alternatively resign ourselves to drinking chemicals, faecal matter, and urine all rolled in one big cocktail mix, exposing ourselves to lifelong health risks.