Drinking water standards at Higher Level: This statement is Higher Level only. It looks at who decides what is safe to drink, and how regulations protect, or fail to protect, communities when a company moves in.
Practise this as you read
- Outline the roles of the WHO and of national governments.
- Evaluate how well regulations protected water at a bottling plant.
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Advice from the world, law from each country: The World Health Organization (WHO) tells countries what is safe to drink. Each country then decides its own legal limits, and has to enforce them.
Guidelines and standards
- The WHO publishes guidelines for drinking water: safe levels for each substance.
- Guidelines are based on health evidence, and they are advice, not law.
- Each government sets its own statutory standards: legal limits it can enforce.
- Water companies must test the water and meet the national standard, or be fined.
- Examples: arsenic 10 µg per litre; nitrate 50 mg per litre; no E. coli in 100 ml.
Remember it as: The WHO advises; governments legislate.
Statutory standards in the USA come from the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974; in the EU, from the Drinking Water Directive.
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Why don't all countries simply copy the WHO's numbers?
Why national standards differ
- Some countries set standards less strict than the WHO, because meeting them costs too much.
- Bangladesh allows 50 µg of arsenic per litre, five times the WHO's 10 µg.
- Others set stricter standards: the EU will allow only 5 µg of lead from 2036.
- Standards depend on money, technology, local water and health priorities.
- A standard only protects people if it is monitored and enforced.
Remember it as: Stricter if you can afford it; looser if you can't.
Wells
- From the 1970s, millions of tube wells were dug to escape germs in surface water.
Arsenic
- In the 1990s the groundwater was found to hold natural arsenic, which causes skin lesions and cancers after years of drinking it.
Standard
- Bangladesh kept a standard of 50 µg per litre. At the WHO's 10 µg, far more wells would fail, leaving millions with no supply.
Trade-off
- The looser standard keeps water flowing, but people below it still face a higher cancer risk than the WHO advises.
Standards matter most when a new project could change the water: a mine, a factory or a bottling plant.
Regulations and standards in an EIA
- An environmental impact assessment (EIA) studies a project's effects before it is approved.
- It checks the project against regulations: how much water it may take, what it may release.
- It sets conditions: a water permit, waste standards, regular monitoring.
- It should consult local people, whose wells and farms are affected.
- Weak EIAs, weak laws or weak enforcement leave local people unprotected.
Remember it as: Assess before you build; set limits; keep checking.
Plant
- In 2000 a company making Coca-Cola drinks opened a bottling plant in Plachimada, a farming village. It pumped up to about 500,000 litres of groundwater a day.
Wells
- Villagers, many of them Adivasi farmers, said their wells fell and turned too hard and salty to drink.
Sludge
- The plant's waste sludge was given to farmers as fertiliser. In 2003 tests found cadmium and lead in it.
Licence
- After protests from 2002, the village council refused to renew the licence in 2003. The plant stopped production in 2004.
What a strong EIA would have checked: How much groundwater the area can safely give each year; a limit on pumping below that; standards for the sludge and waste water; and regular testing of the villagers' wells.
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When a company from a rich country invests in a developing one, whose rules apply?
Standards in international business
- A foreign company may follow the host country's weaker rules, not its home country's.
- Business agreements can require it to meet national or international standards.
- Since 2010 the UN has recognised a human right to water and sanitation.
- Local government can refuse or withdraw a licence.
- Courts and compensation can make the polluter pay, but often too slowly.
Remember it as: Rules on paper, enforcement in practice.
What protects people
- Clear legal standards for water use and waste.
- A strong EIA with local consultation.
- Licences that can be withdrawn.
- Independent monitoring.
What fails them
- Weak or unenforced laws.
- Jobs and investment put first.
- Slow courts: no payment years later.
- Poor communities with little voice.
Real example: in 2010 a Kerala government committee put Plachimada's losses at 216 crore rupees. A law to set up a tribunal for compensation was passed in 2011, but it never came into force, and no compensation has been paid.
How this comes up: Paper 1: a fact file on a bottling plant, mine or factory, with 'explain how regulations could reduce its impacts' [3-4] or a final 'to what extent' [6]. Paper 2: 'outline the role of the WHO and national governments' [2-4].
The WHO guideline for arsenic in drinking water is 10 micrograms per litre, while Bangladesh's legal standard is 50 micrograms per litre.
Outline the difference between a WHO drinking water guideline and a national standard.
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