Craic On

By Enda Craig.

Conned the Public

Irish Water, the EPA, and the Health and Safety Authority have conned the public into thinking that they have to chlorinate to protect drinking water quality from microbiological contamination and it would be dangerous and irresponsible to stop chlorinating to avoid the relatively minor issue of the disinfectant by-product created, the more than 60 chemicals classed as THMs, trihalomentanes.

‘The real risk of inadequate chlorination outweighs the risk associated with THMs and should be avoided’. ‘We can’t risk public health!’ they say accusing interfering environmentalists like Brockovitch of ‘scaremongering’.
This is nonsense.

Compliance Investigation

After a complaint from a resident in Ballycroy County Mayo in 1998 triggered an EU Environmental Compliance investigation, on 14 November 2002 Ireland was condemned by the European Court of Justice over the microbiological contamination of hundreds of public and private water supplies.

The EU’s Drinking Water Directive requires an absence of e.coli in drinking water supplies in order to protect human health.

These bacteria point to a high risk of human pathogens being present.

Final Warning for Ireland

In 2007 Ireland received a final written warning for not complying with that judgment. Ireland chose chlorine as an answer.

The Commission warned them privately that chlorine was not really suitable for Ireland – that two of the biggest threats both biologically and chemically to Irish water are not addressed by chlorine – cryptosporidium and THMs.

But the method by which a member state addresses a judgment of the court is left to the member state’s discretion.

New York City Water Resources Protected

New York City, for example, protects its water sources so carefully that most of it does not even require filtration and minimal chlorine is used only in conjunction with UV light which inactivates harmful microorganisms but does not change the water chemically, as nothing is added except energy.

Irish water is creating these chemicals by using the wrong kind of disinfectant for our surface waters. These chemicals were not there before Irish Water got its hands on it.

You and I are paying the price now for the refusal of the Irish State to listen to good advice and instead take the ‘cheap’ and easy way out. The Irish State has been putting your health at unnecessary risk so they could make more money.

Water Treatment Structure Obsolete

Alternative methods of disinfection like UV light and filtration systems would have rendered the current water treatment structure obsolete (as it has transpired to be), so requiring more money and higher maintenance – with chlorine, you just chuck it in.

All the Commission could do and did with diligence was to pursue Ireland relentlessly to at least install chlorine meters, as chlorine is a poison and as they say in the trade, ‘poison is in the dose’.

So it’s NOT a question of chlorine OR THMs.

Chlorine does stop cryptosporidium. And it actually creates THMs. Don’t believe their lie.

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