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DOZENS of international health and environmental organisations have called on the World Health Organization (WHO) to revise its decades-old guideline for nitrate levels in drinking water, arguing that it does not reflect recent scientific evidence on potential health risks.
In an open letter, 85 organisations, including Greenpeace International and the World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA), called on the United Nations health agency to include nitrate in an upcoming review of its drinking water guidelines.
The toxic effects of nitrates — a residue left behind by intensive farming — are widely recognised as particularly dangerous for children and pregnant women.
But the current WHO guideline sets the maximum nitrate concentration in drinking water at 50 mg per litre (mg/L) as nitrate, equivalent to 11.3 mg/L as nitrate-nitrogen. Its historical basis dates to 1958, and the organisations say it is now outdated.
That level was set specifically to prevent so-called “blue-baby syndrome”, a deadly blood disorder in which the blood’s capacity for carrying oxygen is reduced.
But the limit has not been updated in response to robust epidemiological evidence linking chronic, low-level nitrate exposure to long-term human health risks.
“Studies now link nitrate in drinking water, at levels well below the current WHO limit, to bowel cancer and premature birth,” WONCA chair Pratyush Kumar said in a joint statement.
“Water should be life-giving, not life-threatening,” Amanda Larsson, the global project lead for agriculture at Greenpeace, said in the statement.
“We cannot protect human health without protecting the groundwater and rivers that sustain us,” she said.
“Governments must take decisive action to curb the growth of intensive livestock farming and actively support producers in transitioning to ecological farming practices — ensuring that clean, safe drinking water isn’t a luxury, but a guarantee.”
The organisations pointed to findings published last year by an expert panel commissioned by the Danish government indicating that the current international standard was insufficient to protect public health. — AFP