India: Top bottled water brands loaded with pesticides
New Delhi, 6 Feb (IPS/Ranjit Devraj) -- For years, Indians and visitors to this country who fear water-borne pathogens have put their faith in bottled water, paying as much per litre - 20 US cents - as they would for the same amount of skimmed milk.
Now, a leading environmental group, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), has publicised findings that show that even the best-known local brands available on the market have massive doses of deadly pesticides and other chemical contaminants.
After CSE publicised its findings and laid the blame on lax standards and their poor enforcement, the central government responded Wednesday 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 (EEC) 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 the Bureau of Indian Standards (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 the Indian Railways for passengers on its trains was found to have 104 times the safe limit for pesticides.
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 deadly 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 industrialised areas or sites that had a history of intensive agriculture and were likely to have heavily contaminated groundwater.
Pesticide residues were reported in groundwater around Delhi two years ago when the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) 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 on the market.
A survey carried out six months ago by '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 milligrammes of DDT in every litre of milk they produced. That meant that a three-kilogramme baby would be ingesting 0.50 mg of DDT per day, when the daily acceptable level prescribed by WHO was 0.005 mg. 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 (ICMR) showed high amounts of DDT contamination, traced to contamination of bovine fodder and feed concentrates.:
