Testing water purity can be big headache
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With the rise in incidents of water-borne coming close on the heels of a child’s death, the treat of water contamination looms large over the city.
It is natural thus, for Bengalureans to worry about the purity of their drinking water. However, this summer, testing water could prove a Herculean and expensive task for the city.
The central laboratory at Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), which tests water for chemical contents and hard metals, is overburdened and is not accepting water samples from private parties. “There is heavy inflow of samples for test. We are overburdened with the samples that we collect as part of our routine tests.
These tests are mandatory for us to conduct and hence are our priority. We are accepting samples only for our own studies or from government sources.
Even for these samples we require a minimum of 20 days to get back with the results. Thus we cannot accept samples from private parties for tests,” said an official at KSPCB.
Meanwhile the water testing laboratory at the Public Health Institute is practically shut and has not been accepting any samples as their equipment is not working.
“The spectrophotometer in our lab became defunct some four months ago. We cannot conduct any tests,” said an official at the PHI water testing lab.
The KSPCB, however, refers the public to private laboratories that are recognised by it. “There are some laboratories in Bengaluru, which are recognised by us to conduct these tests. They follow the same procedure as us and can be relied upon,” the KSPCB official added.
But, these laboratories charge a whopping Rs 5000 to test just one sample. Moreover, one needs to follow a tedious process to collect a sample. “The process of collecting the sample is more crucial than the test and analysis of the sample.
The results depend 60 per cent on how the sample is collected. One has to follow a set procedure to collect samples and a minimum of two litres of water is required for a test,” said an official at one of the laboratories.
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