WILLFUL POISONING?
Packaged drinking water
manufactured in India is ‘safe’ as it meets guidelines of the Bureau of Indian
Standards (BIS) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), say government officials. The
illogic is frightening and ominous. Both sets of norms are inadequate – a sad
prognosis for public health.
New Delhi, February 14, 2003: Indians are now condemned to drink unsafe and
contaminated water in the name of good health and progress. A technical seminar of
"scientists", convened on February 13 by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS),
declared bottled water manufactured and sold in the country to be ‘safe for human
consumption’ while dismissing the need for more stringent norms for drinking water as
"impractical and expensive".
In a sudden volte face, the BIS has retracted from its earlier decision to
revise its present "non existent" norms and weak methodology for detecting
pesticide residues, arguing that it has decided to amend the norms only in accordance with
World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. This decision is scary, to say the least, as
WHO guidelines are as inadequate as the BIS ones.
As the CSE study "Pesticides in Bottled Water " explained, BIS norms for pesticide residues in bottled water say
that pesticides should be "below detectable limits", meaning that they could be
present but should escape detection. The methodology it specifies to detect pesticides is
such that they would be detected only when present in high levels.
WHO has guidelines for only five of the 20 pesticides tested in bottled water. It is
completely silent on norms for deadly pesticides like chlorpyrifos, endosulphan,
phosphamidon and malathion. In fact, WHO has no guidelines for organophosphate pesticides.
The BIS current position that it will upgrade standards in accordance with WHO
guidelines is a clear indication that public health has been mortgaged under pressure from
the industry.
A recent issue of the internationally acclaimed scientific journal Environment Health
Perspectives (Volume 111, Number 2, February 2003) has published a study by the
Columbia University Center for Children’s Environmental Health. The study clearly
holds the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos responsible for reduced birth weight and
head circumference in minority populations — even at extremely low exposure.
CSE wishes to express deep concern over the slackening of norms for packaged bottled
water. CSE does not insist on European norms but is extremely keen that stringent and
quantified norms be set based on acceptable risks. CSE used the European drinking water
norms as the benchmark in its study as they are the only quantifiable norms for the range
of pesticides used in the country. We wish to highlight the fact that EEC bottled water
norms, which will be notified in 2003, are likely to be stricter than those for drinking
water that we have followed.
For further details, contact:
Souparno Banerjee at 9810098142
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