12 - 18 July 2001
Issue No.542
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 12 - 18 July 2001 Issue No.542 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Keeping it clean
How safe is the water you're drinking? Probably not safe enough. Amira El-Noshokaty investigates the risks you take with every sip
Foreign visitors to Egypt are often warned about drinking the local water -- but what about those of us living here? The tap water that comes out of our faucets and washes our food is guaranteed by the Greater Cairo water authority as fit for consumption when it leaves the plant, but what about the rusted pipes and other perilous byways drinking water may take before it reaches the average citizen?
Last week, the People's Assembly issued a report that indicated that our drinking water is subjected to 31 sources of pollution and that seven governorates surpass the internationally allowed level of bacteria in water -- which is 5 per cent.
Prior to these revelations, 98 people were allegedly poisoned by the tap water in Bardin, a small village in Sharqiya governorate. In another recent incident, the local press reported that the particularly bad taste and smell of drinking water was found to be the body of a drowned man found floating in one of the water purifying tanks. These examples may be drastic and rare, but it is still an open secret that Egypt's tap water is probably not very good for you.
Inhabitants of the country's capital have long complained about the drinking water. People say it is yellowish in colour, that it smells bad and that it's full of little bits of impurities that make it through their taps. Those who can afford it have either installed filters in their homes or resorted to drinking bottled water exclusively.
Mariam El-Gammal, an office manager in the Arab Bank, has a long history with water filters. A resident of the middle-class residential district of Nasr City, El-Gammal started out with a knitted filter hooked to her tap. But it was soon evident that this would not suffice, as it was continually getting blocked by layers of dirt. El-Gammal has since converted to a wax filter. "Maybe some day, amidst all that dirt, I'll find something valuable," she quips.
But the problem is nothing to laugh at. The Greater Cairo Water Supply Organisation is charged with the task of monitoring the quality of water coming from the 13 drinking water plants that service the Greater Cairo area. According to Gihad Hassan, general manager of laboratories and research at the organisation, "When water runs through valid, official pipelines, and into people's houses, not a single polluting element can get into the water -- that is, until the water reaches the storage tanks on top of buildings." At this stage, says Hassan, the water "may be infested with all kinds of bacteria, as well as dust."
The answer seems simple enough: only drink water from pipes laid by the government. But all too often, these pipes aren't accessible. Tharwat Abdel-Aal, who lives in the working-class district of Imbaba, says that pipes for drinking water were only extended to his building a year and a half ago. Before that, Abdel- Aal and his family were forced to get their water from roaming commercial tanks, which passed by their house, paying some 25 piastres per 25-litre tin. Now that drinking water is available in Abdel-Aal's home, his family enjoys what they describe as "brown-coloured water."
The government has increased the productive capacity of drinking water facilities from 5.7 million metres square in 1981 to 18.2 million metres square today while government investment into this sector between 1981 and 2001 was a total of LE51 billion.
Hassan argues that the capital's drinking water is above suspicion, noting that all water undergoes an internationally codified purifying process, starting with sedimentation, through to filtration and chlorification -- all these stages employing state-of-the-art technology. In defence of the city's water, specialists point out that drinking water is not corrosive. Pipelines supervised by the water authority are made of dactyl and steel, which along with high- pressure pumping leaves no room for impurities to be picked up in the water.
Mahmoud Amr, director of Egypt's National Centre for Toxicological Research, counters that, in fact, many cases of stomach upset, especially during the summer, are related to drinking water. Amr argues that since Egypt's main source of water (the Nile) is already polluted, the purification process is not only extremely costly, but, ultimately, it will never result in 100 per cent clean water.
A lot of effort and money is spent on purifing tap water: so why does pollution continue to spew from our taps?
photos: Sherif Sonbol
For the water authority's Hassan, however, the real problem lies in breaking away from the system. People often set up subsidiary pipelines, which branch from the main (valid) pipelines in order to have their own drinking and sewage pipes. And although drinking water is not corrosive, sewage water is. Thus citizens wind up drinking a mixture of both and blaming it on the government.
To make his point, Hassan cites the following example: "A few months ago, an 80-year-old main water pipe broke down on Salah Salem Street. When we tested the water, there were no signs of impurities, the water was crystal clear."
But people remain sceptical. Maha Abdel- Halim, a tour operator, lives in downtown Cairo, in Kasr El-Aini district. Though her building doesn't have a water tank on top, Abdel- Halim complains that the water flowing from her tap has a "funny taste," not to mention the significant amount of residue that settles ominously at the bottom of any glass. She has tried boiling it, but the impurities just float. She says that bottled water hurts her stomach, so the family is stuck with the boiled water, in spite of the impurities. Abdel-Halim recounts with horror how once her eight-month-old baby girl, Noura, drank a little water straight from the tap by mistake. "She got terrible stomach pains and her doctor told us her pain was the result of the tap water."
Across town in the newly inhabited Al- Remaya district, Reem Mohamed, a housewife, complains that if the water is left to run for a while, it becomes stained with "orange rust, mixed with small pebbles."
The ramifications can get much worse than Noura's stomach ache. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), bad water sanitation and management can result in anaemia, arsenicosis, cholera, diarrhea and typhoid, to name a few unpleasant diseases.
Further, the use of chlorine is increased in tap water to more than five milligrams per litre [the WHO-recommended limit], which can result in what is referred to as "summer diarrhea." According to Mohamed El-Abagy, head of the water pollution control laboratory at the National Research Centre, "The increase in the percentage of chlorine in drinking water leads to troubles in the digestive system and irritation. But these ailments are better than the risk of cholera." El-Abagy is of the opinion that debris such as small pebbles in drinking water is harmless. He explained that these small sand particles are probably part of the filtration process prior to the chlorification.
The highest of officials will give testimony to the safety of our tap water. Deputy Minister of Population and Health Magda Rakha told Al-Ahram Weekly that the tap water is perfectly safe -- a view shared by both Hassan Yassin, senior doctor at Homiat (Fevers) El-Abbasiya Hospital, and Mahmoud El-Beih, director of the Tahrir General Hospital, the central hospital in Imbaba district.
Despite all of these assurances of safety, Cairenes who can afford it are turning to bottled water. Hanan Saleh, a sales manager who lives in Mohandessin, has been drinking bottled water for the past five years after she developed troubles with her digestive system which led her to vomit anything she ate or drank that included tap water. Since then, on her doctor's orders, she stayed healthy by keeping away from tap water.
Bottled water may seem healthy enough, but according to El- Abagy, bottled water means storage -- and that leads to a possible increase in bacteria in the bottles we drink from. Another option, of course, is home filtering. Again, El-Abagy warns that there is danger of corruption. He argues that filters act as a bacterial medium more than anything else. "The water passes through the same place where the impurities have been stored, turning the filter into the perfect place for harmful bacteria to grow."
According to the World Bank Development Report for 2000/ 2001, 70 per cent of the population had access to improved water resources between the years 1990 and 1996. Access to sanitation for the same period was 64 per cent.
Drinking water is a subsidised commodity. The water authority's Hassan notes that five million cubic metres of drinking water is produced from all 13 Greater Cairo water plants on a daily basis. One cubic metre is sold for 30 piastres, while it costs the water organisation 50 piastres to provide. This is in addition to the cost of the purification process that rids water of organic pollutant substances, inorganic pollutants, bacteria, heavy metals and minerals, which amounts to thousands of pounds. As Hassan puts it, no expense is spared to guarantee safe water to the 18 million Cairenes he is responsible for. Hassan adamantly argues that the real problem is conservation. "There is a massive waste of drinking water by citizens, who have no idea how scarce water could become."
National Centre for Toxicological Research Director Mahmoud Amr sums up the Cairene dilemma thus: "Be it good or bad, we all wind up drinking tap water. It is either that or the sea."
Something to think about
According to WHO:
- Cases of diarrhea, the leading cause of illness and death in the developing world, can be reduced by 26 per cent when basic water, hygiene and sanitation are supplied. Some 2.2 million people die every year because of diarrhea.
- Forty per cent of the world's 6 billion people have no acceptable means of sanitation. More than one billion people draw their water from unsafe sources.
- Of all water on earth, 97 per cent is salt water. Of the remaining three per cent, 70 per cent is frozen in polar ice caps. The remaining 30 per cent is mostly present in soil moisture or lies in underground aquifers. Less than one per cent of the world's fresh water is readily accessible for human use. It is found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and in underground sources shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page