ISLAMABAD: A quarterly report of the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) on Thursday declared ten bottled water brands unsafe for human consumption.
The brands, including CLEAN PLUS, Royal BLUE, Aqua Health, New Premier, Pacific Pure, Active Life, FINO Pure Water, Crystal Maya, Miracle and PURE AQUA, were found unsafe due to chemical and microbiological contaminations during an analysis.
According to the monitoring report of PCRWR for the quarter from January to March 2017, 103 samples of Mineral/Bottled water brands have been collected from Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Swat, Peshawar, Muzaffarabad, Sargodha, Multan, Lahore, Bahawalpur, TandoJam, and Karachi.
Out of those unsafe brands, 6 brands (i.e. CLEAN PLUS, Royal BLUE, New Premier, Pacific Pure, Active Life and FINO Pure Water) have comparatively high levels of arsenic ranging from 12-69 ppb than PSQCA water quality standard for arsenic (10 ppb).
The excessive level of arsenic can cause various types of skin diseases, diabetes, kidney diseases, hypertension, heart diseases birth defects, black foot diseases and multiple types of cancers etc.
The 4 brands (i.e. Aqua Health, New Premier, Pacific Pure and FINO Pure Water) were found to be unsafe due to microbiological contamination which may cause cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis, typhoid, etc.
Whereas four brands, including Aqua Health, Pacific Pure, Crystal Maya and PURE AQUA, were found unsafe due to the presence of higher levels of sodium ranging from 58-78 ppm than PSQCA water quality standard for sodium (50 ppm) and one brand (Miracle) was found unsafe due to the presence of higher level of potassium.