Contaminants in your tap water

Presentation of the study

The French Health Safety Agency (Anses) has conducted tests between October 2020 and December 2022 to detect the presence of residues of pesticides, explosives and an industrial solvent in drinking water at 300 sites in France.

These pollutants had never before been measured in water analyses.

This page is a summary of the detailed franceinfo article: Read it here!

Discoveries made

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Chlorotalonil

A residue of this pesticide, banned in Europe in 2019, was found in large quantities in tap water. It was present in a third of the sites tested.

1µg/L

1.4 dioxane

An industrial solvent classified as potentially carcinogenic. Although France has no health threshold for this product, several samples exceeded the New York State threshold of 1 µg/L (i.e. taps are turned off if > 1 µg/L), but all remained below the WHO threshold of 50 µg/L.

10%

World War I explosives

Traces of explosives from this period have been found in water even far from the battlefields. Two other explosives, RDX and HMX, were also detected. In all, 10% of samples were affected.

France has no health threshold for these substances.

Pesticides

The sad record is 28 pesticides, discovered in tap water at Choye in Haute-Saône, 13 of them in concentrations over 100 ng/L. Some of these are metabolites (chemical transformations of pesticides) whose toxicity is not always well known.

None of the 300 samples exceeded the emergency health threshold set by the authorities.

The results

Following these analyses and discoveries, several drinking water catchment areas had to be closed.

Many sites are required to carry out work on their catchments when the 100 ng/L (or 0.1 µg/L) threshold is exceeded for certain pesticide metabolites.

These results underline the need for increased monitoring of drinking water.

Analysis points in black are those with either :

A concentration of 1,4 dioxane >= 1 µg/l (shutdown of taps in New York State);
At least one pesticide over 100 ng/l (requiring work in catchment areas);

ÖKO EUROPE analyses in Belgium

ÖKO EUROPE financed an analysis of tap water in Limal at the beginning of July 2023 and the results are similar and detailed in the article here.

In order to compare results, it is important to bear in mind that 100 ng/L corresponds to 0.1 µg/L.

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