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Tale of India's bottled water hard to
swallow
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - For years, Indians and visitors to this country
who fear water-borne pathogens have put their faith in
bottled water, paying as much per liter - 20 US cents -
as they would for the same amount of skimmed milk. Now,
a leading environmental group, the Center for Science
and Environment (CSE), has publicized findings that show
that even the best-known local brands available in the
market have massive doses of pesticides and other
chemical contaminants.
After the CSE publicized
its findings and laid the blame on lax standards and
their poor enforcement, the central government responded
by ordering investigations into a $200 million industry
in which international beverage giants Coca-Cola, Pepsi
and Nestle have investments.
"The CSE findings
are disturbing - we have ordered investigation by a
high-level committee which will submit its report in
three weeks," said Sharad Yadav, union minister for
consumer affairs.
Using European Economic
Commission standards for pesticides in packaged water,
the CSE showed that on average, every sample of bottled
water collected in the capital and in the western
metropolis of Mumbai contained 36 times more pesticides
than maximum permissible limits in Europe.
None
of the companies have challenged the CSE's methodology
or findings, but protested merely that they were
following standards set by the Bureau of Indian
Standards (BIS). "Coca-Cola abides by the law of the
land and follows standards prescribed by the
government," said a spokesman for the company.
Pranay Lal, coordinator for health with the CSE,
said that the fault lay with lax standards set by BIS,
which only require that pesticide residue in bottled
water should be "below detectable limits".
Commented Delhi state health minister A K Walia,
himself a qualified physician, "The CSE lab used the
sensitive internationally accepted capillary column
method to test water and the BIS needs to change the
technique it prescribes before handing out certificates
of safety."
According to CSE's findings, the
Aquaplus brand that is distributed for use by Indian
Railways for passengers on its trains was found to have
104 times the safe limit for pesticide. Coca-Cola's
Kinley brand, Pepsi's Aqufina and Nestle's Pure Life
also miserably failed the tests conducted at the CSE's
laboratories, and were found to contain a cocktail of
such pesticides as lindane, malathion, DDT and
chloropyrifos.
Compared to that, imported brands
such as the prohibitively expensive Evian contained no
pesticides, while Indian brands that genuinely tapped
water from environmentally clean springs such as
Himalayan and Catch had minimal pesticide residue.
Lal traced the problem to the fact that most
bottlers tapped water from deep bore wells close to
heavily industrialized areas or sites that had a history
of intensive agriculture and were likely to have heavily
contaminated groundwater. Pesticides residues were
reported in groundwater around Delhi two years ago when
the Central Ground Water Board and the Central Pollution
Control Board carried out a study which also reported
excessive salinity, nitrate and fluoride content besides
traces of lead, cadmium and chromium.
The CSE
findings come as a shock to relatively affluent people
who depend on bottled drinking water because ordinary
tap water is considered unsafe except when boiled or
passed through purifying gadgets, a range of which are
available in the market.
A survey carried out
six months ago by the Hindustan Times, Delhi's biggest
selling English-language daily, found tap water in the
capital drawn from the Yamuna river and treated by the
Delhi Jal Board, the state-owned water utility, loaded
with bacteria that can cause cholera, typhoid and
hepatitis besides containing unacceptable amounts of
solids and dissolved matter. But just how contaminated
the Yamuna itself is can be gauged from the fact that a
few months ago, entire schools of fish floated up dead
due to contaminants traced to the practice of pumping
raw, untreated sewage into the river.
The CSE's
findings also drew attention once again to the high
amount of pesticides indiscriminately used for
agricultural and vector control in India - and form part
of the price paid for rapid development, including the
so-called "green revolution" that has made the country
self-sufficient in food grains.
As far back as
1996, a government-sponsored study showed that lactating
mothers in the national capital had an average of 1.27
milligrams of DDT in every liter of milk they produced.
That meant that a three-kilogram baby would be ingesting
0.50 mg of DDT per day, when the daily acceptable level
prescribed by WHO was 0.005.
Infant milk
formulas and bottled milk were found no safer, and
samples taken from 20 commercial brands tested by the
Indian Council of Medical Research showed high amounts
of DDT contamination, traced to contamination of bovine
fodder and feed concentrates.
(Inter Press
Service)
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