Saturday, September 23, 2006 Gear to find damaging chemicals in drinking water sought By Rimaliza Opiña
THE City Health Services Office (CHSO) on Friday asked the group of water refillers here to pass a resolution urging the City Government to allot funds for the upgrade of laboratory equipment to detect harmful chemicals in drinking water.
City Sanitary Inspector Arthur Killip said the present equipment used by the CHSO could only detect total dissolved solids, bacteria and other forms of microorganisms but not chemicals, which, when ingested, also has harmful effects. These, he said, build up over time unlike the ingestion of coliform, where its effects are felt in a matter of hours.
Coliform is a family of bacteria common in soils, plants and animals. The coliform family is made up of several groups, one of which is the fecal coliform group, which is found in the intestinal tract of warm-blooded animals, including humans.
Ingestion of food or water contaminated with coliform results to gastrointestinal diseases such as diarrhea and cholera. In some cases, ingestion can also cause hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious kidney condition.
The most common chemicals found in drinking water are zinc, copper and fluorine. The zinc and copper are found in metal pipes while small amounts of fluorine are used to purify water or added to toothpaste.
Killip said upgrading the present laboratory could also hasten testing of water samples as results could come out for a minimum of one day.
Under the present set-up, results of bacteriological examination and total dissolved solids (TDS) are released by the CHSO three days after the submission of samples.
Killip, meanwhile, advised the buying public to always look for the latest copy of laboratory results done on water-refilling stations. For those selling purified water, the type of filtration should be done through reverse osmosis and the amount of TDS should not be greater than 10 parts per million and zero bacteria.
For mineral water, TDS should not be lower than 200 and not exceeding 1,000 parts per million, with zero bacteria reading.
This, as recent inspection of the CHSO and the Baguio Association of Purified and Mineral Water Refillers (BAPMWR) revealed that a large percentage of water stations do not conform to sanitation standards and were found to have incomplete filtration standards. It was also revealed that while majority were issued business permits, a still large number do not have sanitary permits, which is a pre-requisite before a permit is issued to allow operation.
The BAPMWR already has a list of complying and non-complying establishments but begged off from naming them, pending the submission of the list to the City Council and the City Mayor's Office (CMO).
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