THE BAD NEWS is that a quarter of all drinking water samples tested last year turned out to be unsuitable. The good news is that regular public health department checks mean most water contamination problems are corrected within a matter of days.
State lab tests carried out last year showed that 25.7 per cent of piped and bottled drinking water samples contained high levels of faecal and other bacteria. Drinking such water could cause stomach upsets, diarrhoea or even more serious health problems.
A further 12.7 per cent of drinking water samples contained what was classified as “suspect bacterial content”, not as dangerous as the unacceptable levels in the 25.7 per cent, but still risky. Only 61.6 per cent of tested samples got the all clear, according to the State lab report for 2000, details of which were publicised by Politis newspaper earlier this week.
According to the report, a total of some 2,044 drinking water samples were tested over the year. The tests covered 437 batches of bottled water, both imported and locally bottled. Ten of these batches (six local and four imported) were deemed unsuitable and withdrawn from shop shelves. But the biggest problem was with piped water, which accounted for most of the 25 per cent of unsuitable samples.
While not denying that the test results were worrying, the public health department yesterday pointed out that most problems with domestic water supply quality were dealt with swiftly, thanks to regular checks carried out by health inspectors.
“We take the samples and get them to the lab, which gives us the results by telephone. Where there is any kind of problem, the inspectors immediately investigate it and the necessary chlorination or other measures are carried out,” a senior public health department official told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
“As soon as we get the results from the lab, we act at once and repeat the sampling in the next few days,”
All water supplies were checked at least once every two months, and most every month, the health inspector said.
“There is a programme for sampling – we cover large communities once a month and very small communities once every two months,” he said.
The state lab needs two days to test samples, so any contamination problem can be tackled with within three days of a sample being taken. A community would only run a serious health risk if a bacteriological problem cropped up soon after a sampling date and was not identified till the next checking date, a month or two later. But the public health official said the frequency of sampling was “well within” the guidelines set by the EU.
Years of over-pumping from boreholes is known to have affected the quality of the island’s groundwater supplies, either by allowing sea water to creep into coastal aquifers or by increasing the concentration of contaminants.
The Geological Survey department recently launched a four-year study of the state of the country’s aquifers, hoping to quantify the extent of the over-pumping and contamination problem. The first results of the study suggest the problem is indeed acute, the department says.
The government recently also commissioned a team of British experts to study nitrate pollution in groundwater. Heavy use of artificial fertilisers is the main source of nitrate contamination in borehole water.
Earlier in week, Politis newspaper revealed state lab findings that 15 per cent of locally grown fruit and vegetables contained traces of between two and five pesticides. Some 14 per cent of local produce contained pesticides classified as carcinogens, the lab found.
Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous said the government was keen to clamp down on over-use of pesticides. He added that pesticide residues in peoples’ food were not as high as they were in previous years.
DIKO yesterday called on the government to take immediate steps to reduce pesticide levels in fresh produce and to set up a food safety council with responsibility for such matters.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
