Water works raise the alarm – drinking water at risk?
How endangered is our drinking water? Waterworks raise the alarm due to problematic substances
The development is « scary », say water suppliers: in the Rhine and in Swiss lakes, the eternal meat chemical TFA spreads rapidly. What this means for drinking water.
Roman Wiget is concerned about Swiss drinking water. He is the head of a water supplier in Seeland – and has a job that is becoming increasingly challenging. The reason is contamination of water with pesticides and chemicals.
Such a problem substance is the trifluoro vacet acid (TFA). It is one of the so-called eternal slide chemicals, the PFAs-and largely comes into the water as a degradation product of pesticides, but also from refrigerants from auto-air conditioning systems or medication.
New measurements show that the TFA concentration in Swiss lakes has doubled at least in the past eight years. A similar development can be observed in the Rhine. The measurements carried out the Working Group of the Bodensee-Rhein waterworks (AWBR), which belongs to around 60 water suppliers from ten cantons as well as from Germany, France and Liechtenstein.
