What happens when your water authority poisons your supply?
Twenty years ago, in July 1988 the little town of Camelford in North Cornwall, UK, was affected by a serious incident at the local water treatment plant.
A contractor making deliveries to this unmanned plant unloaded 20 tons of aluminium sulphate into the wrong tank. The driver was unfamiliar with the plant, and his mistake wasn’t discovered for two days.
During this time the local residents had been noticing that their water tasted strange, and seemed slightly acidic. There were also complaints about skin irritation, along with corrosion of household plumbing fittings.
For the first couple of days the local water authority gave reassurances that although tasting peculiar, the water was safe to drink. Subsequent investigations found, however, that the pH level was low, between 3.9 and 5.0 (ie, acidity high), and there were high levels of both aluminium and sulphate in the water (620mg/l and 4,500mg/l respectively).
Remedial action was taken to flush out the system, quickly bringing the levels of these substances down to around 1mg/litre, still way above the internationally recognized safe limit of 100 microgrammes per litre.
Out of a population of around 2,500, about 400 people complained of health problems as a result of this contamination.
Symptoms reported included sore throats and rashes to the skin to the more sinister sounding joint pains, memory loss and lack of energy.
After this event, the “Lowermoor Incident Health Advisory Group” was set up, (Lowermoor was the name of the water treatment plant). This reported in both 1989 and 1991.
The “advisory group” stated that there were no convincing accounts of long term health problems resulting from the contamination. It did acknowledge that local people had suffered, but put this down to anxiety over the effects rather than actual harm caused.
There was, however, research carried out in 1991 - but not reported until 1999 - which claimed to have found evidence of impaired cerebral function as a result of exposure to these contaminants.
After intense public pressure the government set up another working group in 2002 to re-investigate the incident, thirteen years after the event. How very British. “Kick it into the long grass …. it’ll all blow over”. No Minister. Sometimes it doesn’t.
So besides this nasty accident and the subsequent official inaction - fairly normal, what else do we learn from this?
Aluminium sulphate is one of a variety of chemical compounds routinely used by UK water authorities as part of the water “purification” process.
It works by causing impurities in water to coagulate, in a process also called flocculation. These particles can then be removed by filtering, or by sedimentation.
Known effects of excess exposure to aluminium sulphate include coughing, breathlessness and sore throat on inhalation, redness and soreness on exposure to the skin, and abdominal pain and nausea if swallowed.
A secondary, but not insignificant problem which occurred at Camelford was the corrosion of the plumbing systems by the acidic water, causing the introduction of other metals such as copper lead and zinc, as well as other compounds into the water supply. Mmm nice.
At the time of the Camelford incident, people had little choice but to put their faith in their local water supply company. Although these companies generally do a good job, there are (as in this case) incidences of accidental contamination of the water supply.
There are also chemicals present in our drinking water which are not officially considered to be a health hazard, but may have to be re-assessed in the light of new research.
Historically the British water companies were publicly owned, municipal bodies. People trusted them because there was no real motivation for them to lie. However in recent years the water companies have been privatised. They are now profit making businesses.
The award winning US documentary film, the Corporation, which clinically analysed multinational corporations, lucidly concluded that if they were an individual they would be classified as a psychopath ie a guilt-free person with very little conscience or concern for harm they do.
The problem for British water drinkers is that, unlike the USA, there is not a system in place for effective control of unprincipled corporations by use of the common law. The penalties companies risk are laughably low. There ain’t no Erin Brockovichs around.
Regulatory control from Government is very weak indeed. Sadly, Tony Blair continued the corrupt practice of “revolving doors” for business people between the “private sector” ie the psycho’s, and government departments.
You can see the logic of a Labour Govt, defensive against attack from the right wing press swallowing the cool aid that business and the markets know best. But it’s been a terrible failure in almost every instance.
Government departments are not only prey to influence by “high flying” executives - whose interests are clearly not the same as the public’s - but they have also been decimated by prolonged and idiotic use of “management consultants”.
These clowns who are inexperienced in almost every aspect of business except how to sound plausible in the boardroom, usually always get rid of the older experienced civil servants. So there has been a huge loss of institutional memory.
The fruits of the consultants labours can be seen in all their glory in a long list of catastrophic government IT programmes. These have gone badly over budget and failed to deliver the much promised efficiencies. But the businesses involved don’t suffer. They tend to get paid while the tax payer suffers the loss. And incredibly the same suspects are hired to run other state IT projects.
So coming back to the problem of public water supplies it is fair to say the British are now much less protected when it comes to safety of their water.
We have to rely on the honesty and good behaviour of corporate psychopaths – sorry the privatised water companies - whose governmental guards are usually awol.
If this concerns you, you can take steps to protect yourself.
There are currently a number of easily installed water filter systems which can dramatically raise the level of protection provided to you and your family from these dangers.
An effective way to remove aluminium and other metals from the domestic supply is a reverse osmosis water filter, which can be fitted as part of an under-sink drinking water filter system.
For total protection, ie for bathing and washing water - as well as only drinking - you could look at a ceramic based high quality whole house water filter system.
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