Drinking Water and Public Health Risk

Drinking water is a social determinant to disease, a powerful determinant of health and also promotes socioeconomic developmentyet public health is failing to protect the public with poor drinking water quality posing a threat to public health. Major sourcesof of ground and surface contamination are landfill and human sewerage. Irish Water have consecutively failed year after year tomeet safety standards for bromate, nickel, nitrite, copper, pesticides, arsenic, fluoride, lead, trihalomethanes (THM) so no matterwhat you think about the addition of hexafluorosilicic acid to drinking water as a public health measure, it is in our water inillegal and unsafe amounts hence by definition poses a risk to public health. The EU Drinking Water Directive does not containstandards for microplastics. Existing drinking water treatment and wastewater treatment processes are inadequate at removingpersistent toxic substances (PTS) from water. Bottled water contains endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), heavy metals,pesticides, persistent toxic substances and even gastrointestinal microbes. The following review article refers to Irish drinkingpublic drinking water supplies however the issues reflect those in many first-world countries.