Almost 80% of the water in Ukraine comes from rivers, while 25% of the water supply and sewage systems are in emergency condition. As a result, 60-70% people living down the Dnipro River drink water purified at treatment plants. Such water just cannot be considered fully potable. Moreover, even water filtration devices popular in households these days are not a solution to the problem
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State standard for poison
Almost all open water reservoirs in Ukraine today contain hepatitis A (jaundice) virus and every year 30,000 to 150,000 Ukrainians catch this disease, says Director of Geotekhnologia Volodymyr Synyak. All tap water on the territory of Ukraine is non-potable,” says Synyak. “The technologies used in water treatment have lots of deficiencies. For example, chlorine leads to the formation of mutagenic and carcinogenic compounds.”
Kyiv residents are more or less lucky in terms of the quality of tap water. The situation with drinking water in cities located downstream along the Dnipro River: Cherkasy, Kremenchuk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and in hundreds of smaller riverside towns, whose residents drink Dnipro water, is much worse. The closer the city is to the mouth of the Dnipro, the higher the level of contamination. In addition to that city sewage, plants operating along the banks of the river dump waste into the river.
Residents of 1,200 Ukrainian settlements situated further from rivers drink delivered water. Before the water is delivered it is put through multiple purification stages but it fits only for washing dishes and laundry rather than for drinking purposes. They have no choice but to drink water saturated with all kinds of fertilizers and nitrates that poison the local spring water through the soil.
For example, in Poltava the nitrate content in water is four times higher than the norm (more than 100 mg per liter). Even with the permissible level of 25 mg/l, over ten years the inhabitants of big cities can absorb 200 grams of nitrates from drinking tap water. Meanwhile, the waters in southern and eastern regions of Ukraine have a high content of detrimental salts of heavy metals and petroleum products. As a result, over a lifetime 420 kg of salt and harmful compounds end up in the person’s body. Furthermore, the same quantity of toxins is contained in tap water according to state standards approved back in 1982. New standards have yet to be approved.
The problem is also complicated by the fact that before reaching the consumer, water passes through kilometers of pipes on which a bacterial film creating a hotbed for multiple infections has formed on the inner walls over many years. Today, almost all Ukrainian offices have hot and cold dispensers with purified water. The water in them is safer than tap water, though its daily consumption is nonetheless can be detrimental to a person’s health.
“Water as a coherent structure undergoes changes when purified and treated with chemicals. In the end we receive a technical substance rather than a living thing. Naturally, it is better to drink water from a cooler than a household tap. But have you thought why water that stands for long time in coolers starts to turn green? The bottles are made such that they are very difficult to thoroughly clean and nobody wants to deal with such painstaking work. Most likely, preservatives or some antibiotics are added to the water to avoid such germs from forming”, says Commercial Director of the Ukrainian Mineral Water company Ivan Kuznetsov.
Be cautious with 5-6-liter water containers and do not buy a bottle at random from any vendor. After all, the quality of water depends on where it was drawn from. Furthermore, it cannot be excluded that water sold in such bottles is nothing other than purified tap water.
Solution: bottle and filter
Ukrainians are increasingly refusing to drink tap water in favor of filtered and bottled water. Many of them have installed filters in their kitchen sinks that turn tap water into drinking water. But one must keep in mind that the cartridges in filters have to be changed on a regular basis as they also accumulate toxins and filtered water can eventually become even more harmful than tap water. Given this, the healthier option is drinking mineral water or de-mineralized water in plastic bottles.
“Water is classified by its chemical composition. Curative water with very high mineral content is recommended for consumption only by a doctor´s prescription. Table water – less than 12 mg of minerals per cubic meter of water (Myrhorodska, Luzhanska, Svalyava, Kuyalnyk), drinking water – mineralization is less than 1 mg per cubic meter of water (Morshynska, Truskavetska, Obolonska) can be consumed on a daily basis.
People believe that the deeper the well the purer the water is. However, this is a misleading conception. Everything depends on the protective layer that prevents melted snow, flood waters and contaminated soil to get into the water. The level of protection of wells of Ukrainian brands of water is quite high. So, I advise buying bottled water from recognized Ukrainian manufacturers,” says Kuznetsov.
In closing, a few words about non-carbonated water. Doctors assure that such water contains preservatives that prevent it from going bad for six months. Slightly carbonated sparkling water is highly recommended as the carbon dioxide acts as a natural preservative and is much safer than highly carbonated water.
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