Zero pollution in drinking water: Endocrine disrupting chemicals on New Watch List of pollutants. Environment. (2022, January 19). Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://ec.europa.eu/environment/news/zero-pollution-drinking-water-endocrine-disrupting-chemicals-new-watch-list-pollutants-2022-01-19_en
In January 2021, the EU revised the Drinking Water Directive, which basically enforces quality standards for drinking water in order to protect the health of citizens. They’ve recently added two new endocrine disrupting chemicals on the list of pollutants to monitor. Endocrine disrupting chemicals are chemicals that interfere with hormones in the body’s endocrine system, which if ingested, increase the risk of many serious health issues. These along with other pollutants in any type of water need to be monitored in order to protect the health of humans, biodiversity, and the enviornment. European Union Commisioners plan on continuing to watch out for these harmful toxins, along with any others that are likely to appear in the future.
The EU is on a great track to implementing zero pollution in drinking water, and this is definetly a huge step in the right direction. By enforcing a watchlist to keep track of all these bad chemicals, they’re a lot more likely to prevent even more pollutants that could potentially harm us in the future, not to mention how much of a positive impact it would have on the environment. I do however think that the European Union should speed up the process of when to officially begin monitoring these endocrine disrupting chemicals, since the article mentions that Member States have until January 12, 2023 to do so.
While I think that it’s great that the EU has planned on implementing harsher drinking water standards, I agree it should begin much sooner than it currently is planned. I wonder how these regulations compare to those in the US. How costly will this be for EU countries infrastructure-wise? I wonder which countries will have higher levels toxins in their drinking water than others.
Thanks for the comment! I think that these regulations are relatively similar to those in the US, at least from the articles I read. It will be a pretty costly development though, which is why there’s a big discussion on how communities will even get the money to do this, also interesting to think about the varying toxins in different locations, I wonder that too.
I agree that it is great to hear about the new policies regarding our drinking water. That said, I am curious that since we have been drinking this water for some time now, without these health policies in effect, how much of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals have I drank, and should I be worried?
Thanks for the comment! I’m not sure how many of these toxins actually exist in our water, specifically in California, however I think the main cause for concern is the uncertainty and time it takes to fix this issue. We can’t be sure that we’ve been drinking these pollutants in our area, but other locations definitely have. I think that the worry should be aimed more towards trying to find a solution and how we can clean our water in the future.