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What is safe Water?
Water from the tap
in Australian and
New Zealand cities
and towns is safe
isn’t it? Of course it
is – unless you have
a purification problem. There was one
in Sydney a few years ago and the
result was an increase in the numbers
of Giardia cases reported. There was
a similar problem in Bergen, Norway
recently. In general, though, we can
trust our water as we can the supply
in New York, London, Paris etc. Few of
us think this applies to water supplies
in less developed countries although many of them are safe.
The size of the municipality makes
little difference – for example tap
water in Suva, Fiji is good but it would
be foolish to drink water out of the tap
in Bangkok. Chennai water is said to
be safe but it tastes foul. So what do
we do about the problem? We boil the
water, filter it, treat it with water purifying
tablets or else we buy bottled
water. The safest method is to boil the
water but then you have to let it cool
and keep it in a safe and sterile container,
not always that easy.
Water purifying tablets are either
iodine or chlorine based. They take 20
to 30 minutes to work, the water has
a tainted taste and storage can also be
a problem. Chemical purification is
inefficient where there is particulate
matter in the water which is where
water filters come in. The combination
of filtering and chemical purification
is almost as good as boiling.
Then we come to buying bottled
water, available in almost all the areas
in which tourists visit. Check that the
bottle is properly sealed before buying
it and you should be okay. But did you
know that in India (and quite possibly elsewhere) it is possible to purchase
bottle seals in bulk? So the unscrupulous
can bottle the local water without
the expense of treating it and close the
bottle with a seal making the customer
think that the water is safe. Under
these circumstances the safest bottled
water is that which you know is fully
imported, or a bottle of water that has
a seal covered by separate seal. |
