Pesticides in drinking water and EU legislation
Updated - Monday 22 November 2004
The EU drinking water directive has prescribed norms for pesticides in water intended for human consumption. The WHO seems to use different guidelines. Could you clarify this?
Values
The EU parametric values for individual pesticides (0.1 µg/) and for total pesticides (0.5 µg/l) are not based on any scientific findings. The Member States of the European Union and the European Commission that adopted the Drinking Water Directive 98/83/EC are of the opinion that pesticides should not be present in drinking water. The value of 0.1 µg/l is a substitute for zero, not present in water or below the detection limit.
Total pesticides
Total pesticides, being the sum of all pesticides that are present in concentrations above the detection limit (0.1 µg/l) should not exceed 0.5 µg/l.
All pesticides that are officially registered for use and are likely to be used in the catchment area, need to be monitored and the total sum is calculated by adding all concentrations that exceed the parametric value/detection limit of 0.1 µg/l.
It is therefore not possible to answer the question of how many pesticides have been considered in total as this will vary between catchment areas and could add up to hundreds of pesticides.
World Health Organization
WHO uses a different approach and has set guideline values for a large number of individual pesticides. In this respect EU legislation can not directly be compared to WHO guidelines.
See also
- Addendum to Volume 1 of the second edition of the WHO guidelines for drinking-water quality (1998), contains guideline values for a number of chemical substances that may be found in drinking water, including pesticides (see p. 17, and further). [278 KB]
- Information on the Drinking Water Directive (Council Directive 98/83/EC on the quality of water intended for human consumption.) Adopted by the Council, on 3 November 1998.
- Kiwa Water Research, the Dutch research and knowledge institute for water and associated ecological and environmental questions, which we consulted for this question.
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Date: 29 march 2004
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