The West Australian newspaper dominates the state's media. It can make or break an issue or a person, regardless of the accuracy or validity of the criticism or cause which it has chosen to champion. On occasion, the paper appears to chose its subjects with sales targets in mind, rather than reasonable justification for its particular slant.
In The West recently, Yasmine Phillips wrote an article warning that recycled water could contain chemicals that posed a risk to human health. It wasn't a big article but, located in a prominent position on page 3 (a right hand page), many people would have seen it. Its provocative headline - Experts warn on recycled water - would then have encouraged most people to read it. Sadly, as shown below, the experts that Ms Phillips was quoting appear to have made a fundamentally incorrect assumption about the way that recycled water would be treated in Western Australia prior to human consumption. My email to Yasmine - see below - received the following unhelpful response:
In The West recently, Yasmine Phillips wrote an article warning that recycled water could contain chemicals that posed a risk to human health. It wasn't a big article but, located in a prominent position on page 3 (a right hand page), many people would have seen it. Its provocative headline - Experts warn on recycled water - would then have encouraged most people to read it. Sadly, as shown below, the experts that Ms Phillips was quoting appear to have made a fundamentally incorrect assumption about the way that recycled water would be treated in Western Australia prior to human consumption. My email to Yasmine - see below - received the following unhelpful response:
Hello Bernie,
I appreciate your comments regarding my article.Unfortunately due to space constraints, my article was cut during the editing process.Thank you very much for your explanation.Kind regards,
Yasmine Phillips
Journalist
Is this a case of The West deliberately scaremongering, knowing that recycled sewage water is one of the highest priority potential sources of future drinking water supplies for Perth? I guess it's a case of "watch this space .... in The West"!
Dear Yasmine,
Is this a case of The West deliberately scaremongering, knowing that recycled sewage water is one of the highest priority potential sources of future drinking water supplies for Perth? I guess it's a case of "watch this space .... in The West"!
Dear Yasmine,
I read your article in Thursday's West expressing concerns about some of the contaminants in recycled water. Can I ask that you investigate their concerns further because I believe they and you have made an incorrect assumption about what is meant by recycled water.
In fact, there are two general types of recycled water. The first is water that leaves a sewerage treatment plant after what one would consider 'normal' treatment - as applies here in WA - and then is put back into the hydrological cycle, i.e. is discharged to a river or ocean. In this situation, the presence of undesirable and potentially harmful contaminants - in particular endocrine disruptors which your article describes as pharmaceutical products - can be significant and of genuine concern to human health.
In fact, there are two general types of recycled water. The first is water that leaves a sewerage treatment plant after what one would consider 'normal' treatment - as applies here in WA - and then is put back into the hydrological cycle, i.e. is discharged to a river or ocean. In this situation, the presence of undesirable and potentially harmful contaminants - in particular endocrine disruptors which your article describes as pharmaceutical products - can be significant and of genuine concern to human health.
However, the second type of recycled water is where water from a sewerage treatment plant is subjected to reserve osmosis (RO) filtration, the same process that is used in WA's seawater desalination plant. In this situation, the filtration plus several other treatments that are applied to the water before it is allowed to be drunk removes all of the contaminants that might be present in the non-RO treated water.
To understand why I am so confident of this statement, can I ask that you consider what happens to water when it is subjected to RO. Under high pressure, the water is squeezed through such a fine filter that the molecules of sodium and chlorine - the common salt that makes seawater salty - cannot pass through the pores. Only the much smaller water molecules can pass through. When you use RO on sewerage water, all the large molecules including the
To understand why I am so confident of this statement, can I ask that you consider what happens to water when it is subjected to RO. Under high pressure, the water is squeezed through such a fine filter that the molecules of sodium and chlorine - the common salt that makes seawater salty - cannot pass through the pores. Only the much smaller water molecules can pass through. When you use RO on sewerage water, all the large molecules including the
endocrine disruptors (which are dozens to hundreds of times larger than a water molecule) are left behind with the salt; only water molecules are able to pass through the filter pores.
The Singapore government and the Orange County Water Board in southern California both use RO and between them they provide recycled water to several million people. All other recycled water in the USA and UK is not subjected to RO treatment.
My understanding is that the Water Corporation's proposal to use Perth's sewerage water for drinking purposes includes RO treatment. On this basis, the concerns by your quoted experts are almost totally overcome.
Regards
Bernie Masters
No comments:
Post a Comment