The Hanoi Health Department has taken samples from two major water plants for testing after a group of scientists claimed early this week that the water supplied by several plants was unsafe for use by humans.

They are being tested at three different laboratories of the Institute of Chemistry - an agency belonging to the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), the Institute of Labor Medicine and Environmental Hygiene, and the Hanoi Center of Preventive Health.

The department will establish a scientific committee to assess the water quality and any ill-effects it might have on humans when the results are released sometime in the next ten days.

Within the next week, samples will be taken from a dozen water plants in Hanoi to test substance concentrations according to 120 indices, especially the levels of ammonia and arsenic, Hanoi Health Department Director Le Anh Tuan said on Wednesday.

If necessary, police will be called in, Anh warned.

The department’s action follows a claim by Dr. Tran Van Nhi from VAST’s Institute of Biotechnology and his colleagues on Tuesday that their tests showed samples from Ha Dinh, Phap Van, Tuong Mai and other plants contained a critically excessive level of ammonia – 10 mg/l compared to the regulated 1.5 mg/l.

The samples also contained arsenic, they said.

Scientists warned a couple of years ago that the city’s tap water was contaminated by ammonia, yet the agencies responsible for public health have failed to do any testing or otherwise deal with the problem, Dr. Nhi said.

“Phap Van was then the most contaminated, with the concentration of ammonia in one liter of water standing between 15-18 milligrams and 40-60 milligrams, while the safe level is considered to be below 1.5 milligrams per liter.”

Dr. Nhi’s latest tests show that Phap Van still tops the black list, followed by Ha Dinh, Tuong Mai and Cao Dinh.

When the water is heavily tainted with ammonia like that, it can be used for washing for a short time but “definitely can’t be used for drinking or cooking,” he said.

He and his colleagues warned that, while ammonia poses little direct risk to human health, it can blend with other substances in the water to create carcinogens.

Dr. Nhi found out about the excessive ammonia in the tap water when he was testing his institute’s idea of using microorganisms to get rid of ammonia.

He tested more samples after a rash of complaints about Hanoi’s tap water, one being that meat boiled in the water remained red no matter how long it was cooked.

The health department, on the other hand, has a quite different opinion of the water quality.

In a recent interview with Tien Phong, Deputy Director Hoang Duc Hanh said Hanoi’s tap water definitely met every safety standard, adding that the Hanoi Preventive Health Center took samples for testing every month.

According to Hanh, the latest batch of tests in December and January showed that only Dinh Cong Water Plant failed where the ammonia content was concerned, with 2 mg/l compared to the regulated 1.5 mg/l.

Nguyen Hoa Binh, deputy director of the Preventive Health Center, said Dinh Cong had since been ordered to fix the problem.

Nguyen Viet Cuong, the health department’s chief inspector, confirmed the monthly sampling and testing when quizzed by the newswire VnExpress, and agreed that samples from different locations could yield different test results.

Tran Quoc Hung, deputy director of the Hanoi Clean Water Trading Company, told VnExpress that household tanks could be partly responsible for the presence of ammonia and arsenic in the water.

Source: Agencies