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OPEN LETTER
18th December 2003
Dear Commissioner Wallström,
Prevent wilful pollution of EU drinking water with imported industrial waste,
Stop British & Irish governments forcing untested pollution chemicals on 9 million consumers !
On December 25th, 2003 the new Drinking Water Directive (98/83/EC), ‘the Directive’, is to be implemented in Member States. In its current form it allows drinking water intended for human consumption to contain an untested industrial waste chemical, hexafluorosilic(H2SiF6) acid at up to 1milligram per litre (1mg/L). The same chemical has not been safety tested by any regulatory agency worldwide including the WHO. Its other uses are industrial e.g. treatment of surfaces and electroplating (1). Within virtually all the EU, only Ireland and the UK permit its use in drinking water.
Open Letter
To
Commissioner Margot Wallström
We are concerned that a directive aimed at protecting human health and the environment allows nine million UK and Irish consumers to be exposed to a chemical substance that the EU Scientific Committee on Toxicity and Ecotoxicity (CSTEE) has described ‘a pollutant’. The CSTEE has also declared that the level of protection in drinking water for infants is far less than that set for lead which must not exceed 0.01mg/L (2). Such high fluoride exposure from water contradicts the Directive’s stated concern for vulnerable groups such as babies who, if they receive infant formulae made up with fluoridated drinking water, are exposed to one hundred times more fluoride than from mother’s breast milk (3).
Equally bizarre is that, by allowing the deliberate addition of the pollutant to drinking water, the Directive undermines its own Article 4.2; this prohibits Member States from adopting measures leading ‘to any increase in the pollution of waters used for the production of drinking water’. Even ground or surface waters may not be deliberately polluted by hexafluorosilic acid; as a persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic chemical, it is ‘a priority hazardous substance’ that is prohibited under the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC).
We therefore ask you to urgently revise the Directive to prohibit the deliberate addition of hexafluorosilic acid and similar anthropogenic fluorides not only to protect human health and the environment but also to restore consumer confidence in the Directive itself.
This Open Letter is supported by VOICE of Irish Concern for the Environment, Irish Doctors Environmental Association, Carra Mask Corrib Water Protection Group and the National Pure Water Association in the UK, representing over 500,000* EU citizens in the UK and Ireland where public opposition to hexafluorosilic acid in drinking water is overwhelming i.e. over 90%. * UK Register of objectors alone exceeds ½ million names.
(2) C2/VR/csteeop/12062003/D(03)
(3) Dr C.V.Howard : Scientific Opinion of Sept 2003 on - http://www.voice.buz.org/fluoridation/index.htm
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ENDS