The quality issues affecting Europe’s water
06 August 2008
There are two absolute essentials to life: oxygen and water. The quality of both come under question. Governments around the world are tackling issues surrounding air pollution but it is within the resources of each individual to be able to provide themselves and their families with clean, fresh tasting drinking water. Pure Eau can help overcome some of the more immediate problems of healthy drinking water in the workplace by supplying water coolers and in the home, domestic water filters which use the advanced technology of reverse osmosis. This results in the removal of 96% of contaminants and impurities in tap water making it the cleanest, purest and healthiest water.
Since the Industrial Revolution, most of Europe's rivers have been treated more like a convenient way of transporting waste to the sea, destroying the biodiversity of thousands of kilometers of waterways, harming human health, and polluting coastal waters in the process. Treating sewage and industrial waste being pumped into Europe’s rivers has made significant progress over the past decades which have resulted in lower levels of most pollutants and a measurable improvement in water quality.
Removal of nitrates in rivers has unfortunately not seen the same success due to the agricultural sector not having addressed the problem. Nitrate levels in Europe's rivers are still as high as they were at the beginning of the last decades.
The European Union bases its water management principles on a high level of protection for human health and the protection of water resources. However, the scientific knowledge related to effects of contaminants and impurities in the water leaves a margin for error when minimum levels are set. Therefore, contamination limits, when set, should err on the side of caution, based on what is recognized knowledge.
The first wave of European water legislation began with the Surface Water Directive in 1975 and culminated in the Drinking Water Directive in 1980. Legislation focused mainly on water quality objectives for particular water types and uses, such as fishing waters, shellfish water, bathing waters and groundwater. A 1988 review of European water legislation was based more on an emission limit value approach, which resulted in important new directives in 1991 on urban wastewater treatment and on the protection of waters against pollution by nitrates from agricultural sources. For the future, a new European "Water Framework Directive" was adopted in 2000. It requires integrated water management planning in river basins based on a combined approach of water quality standards and emission limit values. This new legislation will also expand the scope of water protection to all waters, surface waters and groundwater, and set an obligation to achieve good status for all these waters within a set deadline. large cities and in southern Europe.
Europe's water quality is generally improving but agriculture still the main challenge. This makes it important to monitor the effects of next year's enlargement of the European Union on agriculture and water resources in the new Member States. Economic restructuring in central and eastern Europe during the 1990s generally led to reduced pressures on the aquatic environment, but any widespread intensification of agriculture after EU enlargement is likely to reverse this trend. The European Environment Agency today publishes a short briefing paper, Status of Europe's water, summarizing the overall picture and highlighting the issues on which progress is and is not being made.
Nearly 30 years of European Union environmental legislation, together with national and international action, to protect and improve the aquatic environment are bearing fruit in many areas, although large gaps in data on some issues mean that related conclusions must be treated with caution. Where overall progress is being achieved on an issue there can still be specific problems and geographical 'hot spots,' however. The areas of progress include generally improving river quality in 14 countries for which information is available.
Pollution of rivers and lakes by phosphorus and organic matter from industry and households has seen a notable reduction, and discharges of these substances into the seas have also fallen. River pollution by heavy metals and other hazardous substances is generally decreasing and there is evidence that this is also lowering concentrations in Europe's seas. The total amount of oil spilt from vessels dropped during the 1990s. There has also been progress in reducing overall water withdrawals ('abstraction') and use, except in the western part of southern Europe. Furthermore, significant improvements in information about Europe's water have been achieved through the implementation of Eurowaternet, a water data and information-gathering network coordinated by the EEA.
By contrast, no overall progress is being made on reducing nitrate and pesticide pollution or water withdrawals for irrigation, energy use and tourism. Nitrate pollution, particularly from fertilizers used in agriculture, has remained constant and high. Nitrate concentrations in rivers remain highest in those western European countries where agriculture is most intensive. There is no evidence of changes of nitrate concentrations in groundwater, and nitrate in drinking water remains a common problem across Europe. Pesticides from agriculture continue to be present at concentrations that are cause for concern in raw water used for drinking water production, but lack of data makes it impossible to establish trends. Regarding water withdrawals, there has been a slightly increasing trend in agricultural water use, such as for irrigation, in western southern Europe. The same trend can be seen in water for energy production in the countries of central and Eastern Europe that will join the EU next May.
Although measures have been made in the UK to prevent the seepage of nitrates into rivers, it is still a problem in agricultural regions with some rural areas giving up higher readings than would be wished by the water authorities for those places.
Where this is a problem, the installation of water filters from Pure Eau under the sink in the kitchen, using the reverse osmosis technology, would remove traces of all chemical contaminants providing the clean fresh drinking water nature intended.
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