Urgent need to reevaluate the latest World Health Organization guidelines for toxic inorganic substances in drinking water.

Publisher: BioMed Central Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 101147645 Publication Model: Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1476-069X (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 1476069X NLM ISO Abbreviation: Environ Health Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: London : BioMed Central, [2002-

Guidelines as Topic*; Drinking Water/*analysis ; Inorganic Chemicals/*analysis ; Water Pollutants, Chemical/*analysis; Drinking Water/standards ; Environmental Monitoring ; World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) has established guidelines for drinking-water quality that cover biological and chemical hazards from both natural and anthropogenic sources. In the most recent edition of Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality (2011), the WHO withdrew, suspended, did not establish, or raised guidelines for the inorganic toxic substances manganese, molybdenum, nitrite, aluminum, boron, nickel, uranium, mercury, and selenium. In this paper, we review these changes to the WHO drinking-water guidelines, examining in detail the material presented in the WHO background documents for each of these toxic substances. In some cases, these WHO background documents use literature reviews that do not take into account scientific research published within the last 10 or more years. In addition, there are instances in which standard WHO practices for deriving guidelines are not used; for example, rounding and other mathematical errors are made. According to published meeting reports from the WHO Chemical Aspects Working Group, the WHO has a timetable for revising some of its guidelines for drinking-water quality, but for many of these toxic substances the planned changes are minimal or will be delayed for as long as 5 years. Given the limited nature of the planned WHO revisions to the inorganic toxic substances and the extended timetable for these revisions, we suggest that governments, researchers, and other stakeholders might establish independent recommendations for inorganic toxic substances and possibly other chemicals to proactively protect public health, or at the very least, revert to previous editions of the Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, which were more protective of public health.

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0 (Drinking Water)
0 (Inorganic Chemicals)
0 (Water Pollutants, Chemical)

Date Created: 20150814 Date Completed: 20160511 Latest Revision: 20181113

20221213

PMC4535738

10.1186/s12940-015-0050-7

26268322