Hi All
This article from the New Straight Times today (25/05/08) I hope will re-open some healthy debate on the subject of 'Is tap water safe to drink'!
KUALA LUMPUR: Water flowing from your kitchen tap in your landed home is safe for consumption. Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Syabas) executive director (operations) V. Subramaniam gave this assurance, adding that there was no need for a home water filter system or for water to be boiled before being consumed.
He said the guidelines on national drinking water standards set by the Ministry of Health (MOH) was stringent enough to determine that the drinking water was safe.
Syabas, a fully privatised entity took over the distribution of treated water to consumers in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya in January 2005.
Subramaniam's assurance comes in the wake of questions raised about our water quality in a recent New Sunday Times article.
In a related report, the Chemistry Department said no tests had been carried out to determine if tap water contained pharmaceuticals.
As at press time, questions sent to the MOH were not answered.
Subramaniam offered that the water quality standards set by the ministry was based on the World Health Organisation's (WHO) standards.
He said frequent checks on water samples based on set parameters were commissioned by both the ministry and Syabas.
He said that although water from the kitchen tap, which was usually obtained directly from the main pipe, was safe for consumption, water filters could indicate otherwise.
He explained that sediments which had settled in old pipes over time would cause the filter to turn brown. These sediments would also be "moved around" when water supply was disrupted and then restored following a pipe burst.
Iron and manganese content in water also make filters turn brownish.
"But these are within permissible limits set by WHO and the ministry. For example, there is an allowable limit of 5.0ntu for turbidity (measurement of silt content in water). But this is not visible and the water is safe to drink."
When a home unit filter is used, Subramaniam explained, the fine sediments were also trapped. "That's why it will look brown."
He said consumers needed to change their perception that they needed a filter system at home, or that they could only consume boiled water.
"Chlorine, which is added to the water to ensure there is no bacterial contamination, is lost when the water is boiled. The water you get from the vending machines also does not have chlorine."
Subramaniam cautioned that household filters which were not well-maintained could contaminate drinking water.
He argued that it was "more worthwhile" to ensure that the internal piping system in the home was well-maintained and rust-free.
To live up to the "filter test", Syabas is cleaning up some 13,000km of pipes through a flushing process on a six monthly basis.
Subramaniam said since it employed the technique in the middle of last year, the number of "coloured water" complaints had dropped, from an average of 300 complaints a month at its peak to just above 200 complaints a month currently.
He said the problem would be further curtailed when it completed its second round of flushing by the end of this year.
To reduce incidences of burst pipes, Syabas will replace about 6,000km of old asbestos cement pipes with ductile iron pipes and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes. Some 800km of piping has been changed so far.
Syabas supplies treated water to some 7.3 million consumers through more than 1.5 million premise connections.
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sunday/National/2249512/Article/index_htmlCorporateangel
Topic: Is tap water safe to drink (Read 1985 times)
July 14, 2009, 07:08:01 PM