The water in Europe

Recent tests have shown that drinking water can contain a lot more unknown chemicals than we had expected.

But instead of going all-in on eliminating health hazards at their source, the authorities tend to just raise acceptable contamination limits and sweep the problem under the rug.

Is our tap water clean enough?

We can proudly say that the water in Europe belongs to the better examples if global water quality is taken into consideration.
Most European countries do not suffer from lack of drinking water and water safety is high enough that most of us drink our water straight from the public water supply. But although it is wonderful that most of the time our water does not taste or smell bad, this does not necessarily mean it is free of contaminants.

Microbial and organic pollutants cannot always be detected by human senses.
Take Denmark for example - one of the European most developed countries with high ecological standards, you would expect.

But since the year 2000, there is ever-increasing evidence of a number of harmful substances in both groundwater and drinking water.

Focus is mainly on pesticides and fertilizers from agriculture, although there have also been cases where Danes had to boil their water to avoid bacterial poisoning.

Most of us take our drinking water for granted. Geographically, we are lucky enough. People in Europe have good access to high-quality drinking water. However, emerging reports have been showing that we are still facing many challenges regarding public supply water safety.

We love our water and cannot imagine a single day without it.
Yet, we rarely stop to think it can be one of the main factors affecting our health.
In general, we cannot detect hazards in our water by ourselves, at least not before we start feeling the consequences.

In good scenarios, it will just be odor or taste which shows that tap water is not of the best quality.
In more rare cases, people in the community start to get sick.
Furthermore, the consequences are not always felt immediately.
They can have delayed, accumulated effect.

It might be true that western societies have mostly managed to leave bacterial, viral and parasite water poisonings in the past, but new toxins are emerging each year.
Endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals, agricultural pollution and microplastics are just some of the challenges which public water supply systems have not been able to deal with.

Let's look at some of these issues more closely. European Environmental Agency states that pesticide pollution in drinking water has been identified as a problem in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and in the UK.

Although the wide use of herbicides was banned in 96, the effects of their use over almost 4 decades are found in our water today. Furthermore, new substances are constantly appearing after some become illegal.

Another problem worth mentioning is pharmaceutical and microplastic water pollution. It is a challenge of the modern world which will probably continue to contaminate our planet for years to come. A great deal of all these elements ends up in our water sources.

There is also a risk factor most of us are not even aware of - high temperatures tend to impair water quality by releasing contaminants such as metal from pipes and fittings into drinking water. Hot European summers make recommended 12 C unattainable tap water temperature.

If we add on top of that also recent examples of chlorine, nitrogen, nitrate and E.coli -- which has even forced Danes into boiling their water, it becomes clear that it is also up to ourselves to take care of the safety of the water our family uses.

EU authorities are currently discussing measures for facing these challenges. Greater transparency and consumer access to information on the drinking water quality have been set as the main goals of future legislation.
But until lasting solutions are found it will be hard to restore consumer confidence in tap water.

All information provided on this page based on facts gathered from official sources. We invite you to follow the links we have attached to each statement, as well as links you can find at the bottom of this page, where you will be able to find more detailed explanations of the subject matter.

It is true that public agencies do monitor drinking water quality and set standards for known contaminants. But at Wetality we believe that, when it comes to the safety of something that our families use and consume each day, there is no acceptable level of hazards.

Drinking water should be as clean and pure as possible. And with the Wetality water system, it is possible!