Drinking water across 13 counties in Ireland contains harmful pollutants

Thirteen counties in Ireland have been found to be supplying drinking water containing harmful pollutants.

Cancerous elements such as trihalomethane (THM), were found at high levels in water samples collected across the country. Tests was carried out by Irish Water.

TMH normally forms as a result of chlorination. Some studies says that exposure for a longer period of time could with these pollutants could lead to cancer.

Almost 791 drinking water samples were tested in the last few months. The company through testing found that 59 of 791 samples of drinking water spanning across 13 different counties had failed in the test because they had exceeded the allowed pollutant limit.

The name of the counties which failed in the test are not yet announced, but still there are reports which says that water samples in Donegal, Clare and Louth have failed multiple times.

Dr Michelle Minihan, a senior inspector with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that there will be proper measures to lower down the pollutant levels in drinking water.

She said that the exposure to THMs should be minimised by keeping its quantity absolutely minimum

“The way we’ve gone about addressing that is that where we identify supplies where the level of THMs in them is above the regulatory limit, and where that’s a persistent occurrence, we take action and add those to our remedial action list.” She said.

She also added that Irish Water has to identify an action programme to address the THM exceedances.

Later Irish Water confirmed that a programme has indeed been put in place to understand and clear the problem.