Water: a clear and present danger.

Clean drinking water. It is something that the public has pretty much taken for granted for the past hundred years. The public has little idea and, perhaps understandably, little interest, in the many people and agencies struggling daily to ensure that drinking water remains uncontaminated. But our environment is changing, new pathogens are emerging, drinking water systems are aging, and governments seem more interested in ensuring business in the global marketplace than in ensuring the safety and health of its citizens. In Canada, Public Health was established in the late 1800s in response to people’s concerns about disease spread by contaminated drinking water. Chlorination of drinking water started early in the 1900s and was readily accepted because of the quick and visible reduction of disease when it was instituted. But Public Health is often the victim of its own successes: when things go well, the public doesn’t see the disease we prevent. Interest and funding decrease and the public assumes that uncontaminated drinking water is the natural order of things rather than something that needs to be constantly monitored, trained for, and maintained. In this issue of the CJPH, the article on the survey of British Columbia’s drinking water during 1997-98 substantiates the concerns that have been discussed during the Inquiries of the Walkerton and North Battleford waterborne outbreaks of disease. To name a few: lack of a protected water supply, potential sources of pollution in the watershed area, lack of primary disinfection, lack of training programs in over half of water system operations, and potential routes of pollution into groundwater from abandoned wells. Our environment is changing and we can no longer trust that our water sources will remain, or are, pristine. There are now some 6.2 billion people on this planet that, the experts tell us, can only sustain a maximum of 4 billion people. Human, agricultural, and industrial wastes are increasing. These same wastes are finding their way into our groundwater and put it at bacterial, viral, and chemical risk. New, deadly pathogens like E. coli 0157:H7 are emerging to threaten our water supplies. In Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, 30-40% of private wells routinely fall short of standards for potability. Water is a common resource and should be regulated as such. That means that both public and private water usages should be included in the overall management of our water.