KARACHI, Aug 21: Professionals from various educational institutions and government agencies have expressed dissatisfaction over the existing arrangement of potable water chlorination in mega cities of the country.

They have recommended civic agencies to replace chlorine with chlorine dioxide which, they said, was much safer and did not produce the by-products which threatened health.

The experts suggested the government to promote the use of solar radiation treatment system for water disinfection in rural areas, including desert of Tharparkar, Cholistan and other Arid regions where the potable water was very little and that too contaminated most of the time.

About 35 professionals and scientists belonging to universities in the province, Sindh Environmental Protection Agency, provincial health department participated in the three-day workshop on ‘Water Disinfection and Action Plan During Emergency”, which concluded on Wednesday.

The event was organized under the aegis of the Institute of Environmental Studies, Karachi University. The World Health Organization and Ministry of Health Islamabad also collaborated with the IES regarding the workshop.

The workshop strongly recommended that booster chlorination approach must be adopted, particularly at places where water distribution network was very long and the water took considerable time to reach the tail-end consumers. It was noted that cities like Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Hyderabad water disinfection with chlorine was being practised, but outbreaks of water-borne diseases were on the increase owing to many reasons, including faulty water distribution network.

“Although chlorine has been found to be a universal disinfection agent, its use as a disinfectant in highly-turbid water with high quantity of dissolved organic matter has been

found producing chlorinated by-products, which can cause serious health risks including cancer.”

The workshop stressed the need of encouraging the use of solar radiations, chlorine tablets, iodine and hider peroxide in rural areas for disinfecting water. Another recommendation of the workshop urged the civic agencies like KWSB and Wasa and other water management bodies at district level to look into the possibility of total replacement of chlorine with much better disinfectant like Ozone, which, according to the scientists, had internationally been approved to be free from producing hazardous disinfection by-products (DBP) and also readily killed viruses.

Considering the problems in getting healthy water in rural areas, the workshop recommended for developing appropriate technologies for water disinfection at the individual-house level.

In view of the frequency and importance of water borne diseases, relevant government organizations were urged to establish within their information systems epidemiological surveillance programmes to help detect water borne disease outbreaks and epidemics.

At different technical sessions on Wednesday, Dr M Altaf Khan, Dr Moazzam, Dr Omme-e-Hany of IES and Dr Hansotia and Dr Shakeel Ahmad Khan spoke and highlighted the different aspects of water disinfections and problems.