A recent study has raised doubts over the safety of water purifiers in third-world nations. An NGO in India carried out a survey which raises alarms for majority of households in third-world nations where water purifiers are no less than mandatory considering the scarcity of clean drinking water.

Healthy You Foundation, the NGO that carried out the study, revealed that there are no regulations for the water purifier equipment manufacturing industry in terms of safety standards. However, there are BIS standards to be met by the packaged drinking water producers and natural mineral water industry.

United States has the Environment Protection Agency and Europe has European Chemicals Agency as the regulatory bodies for scrutinizing the safety standards for drinking water.

Due to the lack of regulations, most low quality products’ manufacturers get away easily.

The findings reveal that formation of disinfection by-products is another risk including even Chlorine, the most common disinfectant used. It can have unpleasant health effects that include metabolic disorders, renal failure or cancer.

The problem is more severe in chemical based purifiers using Trichlorocyanuric acid, iodine, nano silver and bromines. Various lacunas found in these purifying systems were inadequate to filter out dissolved solids and were also unable to deal with hard water.

The Healthy You Foundation has forwarded its report to Food Safety Standards Authority of India and also the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for the necessary actions to be taken.

Source:

The First Reporter