Bottled drinking water in Bangladesh is no longer safe as it does not comply with international safety standards, thus becoming a threat to public health. Supply of bottled drinking water is a rapidly growing business in the country. A large number of people have turned to bottling drinking water, reflecting the diminishing confidence of people in water supplied by the civic authorities.
Kazi Faruque, president of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB), said that in the absence of proper monitoring and legal safeguards, bottles of contaminated and substandard drinking water were dominating the market.
The department of soil, water and environment of Dhaka University has found a high level of contamination in bottled water, mainly sourced from the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA).
Prof. Didarul Alam told The Independent: “Unscrupulous manufacturers and traders are doing brisk business selling such bottled drinking water.”
He said the Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institute (BSTI) should check every bottle of drinking water for the sake of public health.
“Scarcity of pure drinking water has already exposed people to various health hazards. To overcome the problem, they started buying bottled water as an alternative source of pure drinking water. Unfortunately, this has also been found contaminated,” he added.
The investigation found the levels of inorganic elements, declared in the labels on some bottles, to have exceeded the recommended levels for human consumption. For instance, sodium was found in excess, which may lead to high blood pressure. More than half the bottles taken as samples for the test carried information about minerals and other ingredients that were not well founded.
The probe also found that bottled drinking water was mostly groundwater, while one of the brands used water supplied by the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA). The findings reveal that manufacturers often follow flawed techniques to control the quality of drinking water. This has put consumer rights at risk.
Besides, severe inconsistency and errors exist in the specifications declared on the labels of the bottles. About half of the contents specified on the labels, when analysed in laboratories under strict quality assurance and quality control (QAQC), were found to be wrong. The study also showed that 80 per cent of the manufacturers did not mention the address or the location of their plants, as required by the regulation. Some of the addresses were even found to be false.
The study has recommended introduction of a total quality management system.
Dr Azaharul Islam, a scientist of the International Centre of Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), said people could get diarrhoeal diseases as well as other long-term ailments if they drank contaminated bottled water.
Courtesy of The Independent
