Riversdale residents concerned about the level of nitrates in their bore water are considering their options after water testing carried out in the town yesterday.
Greenpeace Aotearoa staff tested the water of 28 bores in the town using a spectrometer and found levels ranging from 5.19mg/l to 8.88mg/l.
The maximum level allowed in New Zealand is 11.3mg/l, which is the level set by the World Health Organisation as the limit necessary to avoid blue baby syndrome.
Resident Hilary Riordan said she was interested in having the water tested because she had been reading about the link between nitrate levels and cancer.
The water taken from a tap at her house recorded a nitrate level of 7.4mg/l which "worries me", she said.
"I think it’s very related to the high incidence of cancer in this area," Mrs Riordan said.
"The only solution I see is to collect water off our roof for drinking water but we grow all our vegetables in our garden and water the garden with the bore."
The water that resident Caroline Lennon submitted for testing recorded 8.1mg/l.
"I didn’t think that was very good at all," Mrs Lennon said.
She also was considering collecting rain water to drink.
Farmer Robina-Lee Johnston, who lives at the Gore end of the Hokonui Hills, took a sample of tap water which is sourced from a spring about 1.5km from the house.
The sample recorded 0.78mg/l.
Nitrogen fertiliser was used sparingly on the farm which could explain the low level of nitrates in the water, Mrs Johnston said.
"I am quite rapt."
Altogether 51 people had their water tested.
Greenpeace Aotearoa senior campaigner Steve Abel said he was "very concerned" about how high nitrate levels were in the town’s water samples.
"In fact 100% of them were over the 5mg/l which is the risk for pre-term birth and all of them are well over the cancer risk limit of 0.87mg/l," Mr Abel said.
A Danish study had shown there was a link between bowel cancer and nitrate levels of 0.87mg a litre.
It was not easy to remove nitrate once it was in water and the best option was to stop it getting there.
"That means taking some hard choices around phasing out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and lowering stocking rates," he said.
- Sandy Eggleston
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Comments
Like it or not, this is a by-product of Southland's intensive farming. I imagine if we did the homework we'd discover that Southland and other rural areas like it in Aotearoa have had the highest rates of cancer per head of population for the past 50 years as the poisons contained in the fertilizer used on our farmland added to our heavier rainfall causes a lot more of the poison to leech into our drinking water system. I'm no scientist, but it doesn't take a degree to see the obvious. Please someone look deeper into this. I'm getting depressed hearing how prevalent cancer has become in Murihiku without the health system being funded enough to deal with it adequately. It's not fair we die to feed hugely populated foreign countries. Profit won't buy back our lives.