Drinking recycled waste water 'a worry'

Friday May 11, 04:20 PM

Drinking recycled waste water 'a

worry'

Recycled waste water should be used for drinking only as a last resort, an infectious diseases expert says.

Several Australian states and the ACT are considering the use of recycled water as a response to critical shortages.

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Professor Peter Collignon, director of infectious diseases and microbiology at ACT Pathology, told a senate inquiry the water would be better used for non-drinking purposes.

"I think we should recycle as much as possible. My viewpoint is, that last option should be putting it into our drinking water," Prof Collignon said.

"We should find all other ways of using water for irrigation, watering our ovals, all those things so that we have as pristine as possible the water we're using for drinking."

Prof Collignon said purifying water of sewage had historically been a major cause of public health improvement.

"We're going to now, instead of separating it, physically put it back in," he said.

"I think that's a major step that really requires a lot of thought before we start doing that."

He said the reverse osmosis process used in the proposed recycling had been shown not to completely remove salt.

"If it leaves one or two per cent of salt, why can't it leave one or two per cent of viruses?"

Prof Collignon was giving evidence at a Senate inquiry into south-east Queensland's water crisis and the proposed Traveston Dam.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has vowed to go ahead with recycling waste water without submitting the proposal to a referendum.

The ACT government has a similar plan for Canberra.

While Singapore is often cited as a user of such water, Prof Collignon said it was only used for industrial purposes.

He said the only other place in the world using it as drinking water was the Namibian capital of Windhoek in south-west Africa, where the alternative was worse.

The head of the French company which will manage the Queensland project has also said recycled water should first be used for non-drinking purposes.

Veolia Water chief executive Antoine Frerot told Britain's Financial Times last month industry and irrigation should use treated waste water instead of tap water.

"That would halve the demand for natural water, Mr Frerot told the paper.

"That is what we should do, before talking about drinking waste water."

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce said Prof Collignon's evidence and Mr Frerot's comments cast doubts over Queensland government claims that drinking the water was safe and done all over the world.

"The whole premise of recycled water saving Queensland works on the belief that you will excrete more than you drink," Senator Joyce said.

"I don't think this is physically possible unless you have got a condition that requires immediate hospitalisation."