Monitoring of Drinking Water Supply Must be High Priority for Food Businesses

The newest figures that were released on the state of the drinking water supply in Ireland are alarming: 5% of public and about 1/3 of private water supply schemes were contaminated with E. coli at least once in 2007. This suggests that in food businesses the annual sampling of drinking water from private sources as required by I.S. 340:2007 and I.S. 341:2007 might not be sufficient. Especially in rural areas, where private water supplies might become contaminated with pathogen organisms from spreading of natural fertilisers, such as unprocessed animal slurries, water testing should be carried out regularly at much shorter intervals.
Operators of private drinking water schemes must take their responsibility for public health very seriously and keep their supplies free from pathogen contamination. The fact that more than 30% of all private group scheme supplies monitored in 2007 tested positive for E. coli at least once is extremely worrying. Not even the fact that only 5% of the population depend on these private schemes can help to put this findings into a perspective that would make them acceptable. The rate of serious contamination of private supplies exceeded those of public supplies nearly 10-fold (11% of all private group water schemes were found to be contaminated with high levels of E. coli at least once during 2007).
Local authorities would be better advised to acknowledge their shortfalls in this sensitive area of public safety instead of constantly suggesting high standards in the Irish public drinking water supply had already been achieved. The standard of drinking water safety in Ireland should not be accepted as 'high' when test results show that in 2007 samples at 11 sources in the public water supply networks (1.2%) were contaminated with serious levels (more then 20cfu per 100 ml) of E. coli bacteria (legal limit 0cfu/100 ml, ingestion of 10 organisms or more can cause severe illness). Samples drawn at another another 5% of publicly administered sources indicated the presence of E. coli above the legal limit (The EPA Report states that 52 public water sources were contaminated with E. coli at least once in 2007 (page 15)). In an area that is as closely related to public health as drinking water, even a small error margin is a luxury that cannot be tolerated. Here, the aim must be to supply water to the public that is 100% safe. The fact that England and Wales are able to control their drinking water supplies much more effectively, highlights the shortfalls of the Irish water supplies system even further.

Read this article that was published in the Irish Times on the 23rd April 2009 for additional information.

Get the EPA report here.