AUSTRALIAN drinking water standards are arbitrary and not well enforced,
according to a recent report by the Productivity Commission.
Every one of us drinks water and almost all are at the mercy of a monopoly
supplier who decides just how pure our water will be. So it is hard to
understand why the report, entitled Arrangements for Setting Drinking Water
Standards, has aroused so little comment.
The National Health and Medical Research Council has developed guidelines to
bring water quality up to levels that constitute 鈥渁cceptable risk鈥�. This is an
important concept. The risk will never be zero, but reducing the hazard costs
money. Any guidelines must balance treatment cost against resulting water
quality.
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The problem is that the link between water standards and health outcomes is
not well understood. And controlled experiments to