Proposed testing regime criticized - will lead to law suits ...

Article in today's Australian Financial Review outlines concerns over residual chemicals in recycled sewage, the associated health risks and the substandard testing regime proposed for Toowoomba.

Excerpts:

2 May 2006

Doctors have warned the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Secretary with responsibility for Water Policy, Malcolm Turnbull, that the government’s support for recycled sewage as drinking water threatens to expose people to chemicals that cause infertility, cancer and genital deformities.

Without big improvements to testing procedures, governments risk hefty law suits from any victims.

Turnbull recently pledged $22 million in federal funding for a pilot plan for Toowoomba in Queensland to recycle sewage for drinking, subject to majority support at a referendum due by September this year.

But there are no guidelines for drinking recycled water in Australia.

The 2005 draft national guidelines for water recycling which are not for drinking recycled water — states, ‘more research is needed on potential human health impacts of endocrine disrupting chemicals, their distribution in reclaimed waters and their removal by treatment processes'.

An international expert on male infertility and head of the Department of Biological Science at Newcastle University, John Aitken, says his research suggests that phenolic oestrogenic by-products that are often in reused drinking water could damage the male sperm line with resultant cancers.

He says testing should be done for the removal of these products from drinking water, especially from recycled water.

In 1994, The Lancet published scientific research headed by Jean Ginsburg from the Royal Free Hospital in London that linked a disturbing trend of decreasing sperm counts to men living in the Thames water supply area.

Other research has documented that the entire fish population of some European rivers showed feminising effects from so called “gender bending” chemicals known as endocrine disrupters.

NSW has recorded possibly the greatest increase in testicular cancer in the world between 1970 and 2000. Aitken says the incidence has risen from two in 100,000 to six in 100,000. In Europe, as in Australia, testicular cancer is now the most common form of cancer for men aged between 20 and 39. Queensland Health has recorded an almost threefold increase in genital deformities in newborn males, known as hypospadias, between 1988-2004.

Toowoomba paediatrician John Cox has written to Turnbull saying that “there seems no doubt that the organic oestrogenic byproducts found by Professor Aitken cause significant infertility and tumours”.

“Our present drinking water varies depending on the organic residues which are not selectively removed and for which we do not have a level of acceptability,” Cox’ s letter says. “It would be of assistance to the country to have these products removed from the drinking water supply.”

Cox says he has “grave reservations about recycling sewage for drinking with current inadequate testing regimes in place for organic residues”.

A spokeswoman for Turnbull says the National Water Commission has made Water Smart Australia funding conditional on the Queensland state government ensuring that the necessary health and safety approvals for the project are in place.

“Queensland is developing an appropriate regulatory framework for potable water recycling to address health and environmental concerns,” the spokeswoman says. “NWC has written to Queensland seeking details of the framework and timing to ensure this project condition is satisfied.”

Toowoomba City Council says it abides by World Health Organisation standards in testing for 140 out of more than 87,000 known chemicals in drinking water.

The Queensland Health Department and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) are project partners in the testing and monitoring phase for the Toowoomba plan.

“CSIRO have prepared a science plan to support the development and implementation of the project,” Turnbull’s spokeswoman says. “The science plan involves technical support for water treatment systems design, the development of a water quality monitoring program, data analysis, community research and overall project review. "CSIRO will provide independent and impartial science advice and research to the council and the community in relation to the benefits, relative risks and uncertainties associated with the project.”

Though in favour of Toowoomba’s plan, CSIRO scientist Cohn Creighton admits that as new pharmaceuticals are being developed each week, devising tests for them was a challenge in water reuse. “The new abortion drug, RU486, is an example,” he says. “A method would have to be devised to test for it, if it was established it was being used in Toowoomba.”

The Toowoomba plan is the brainchild of Mayor Di Thorley and the Toowoomba City Council. It aims to provide at least 25 per cent of the city’s drinking supplies from water reclaimed from the city’s sewage treatment plant.

Its major opponents have been a group called Citizens Against Drinking Sewage, along with former mayor and multimillionaire developer Clive Berghofer and local businesses.

In light of the risks, Cox says all water should be treated with membrane technology, reverse osmosis and UV to rid it of these endocrine disruptors — not just recycled sewage.

Tests should then be done to identify if they have been removed.

He says this is particularly important given the reported multimillion-dollar lawsuit claiming flaws and shortcomings in the recycling sewage purification plant in Windhoek, Namibia.

Namibia was named as a good example of drinking recycled water in the Toowoomba City Council’s Water Futures booklet.


This article will have caught the Toowoomba City Council offguard. Expect some feverous activity in Council chambers over the next few days as they try to have their view published ...