Water tests - 30 of 63 failed

jonnymitchel

Hello,
Just wanted to know if anyone else has had the same experience. I'm buying a house at the moment and the water search has come back saying that 30 of 63 tests have failed to meet the standards for metaldehyde. I've googled this and its down to pesticides. The report says that the HPA has advised that there is no risk to health, but I'm still a bit wary of this. Anyone else had this or know whom I should contact?
Thanks,

Davesnave

It's slug pellets. Farmers chuck them about willy-nilly with machinery and then people agonise over whether to use small quantities themselves over on the Greenfingered Board. It's hilarious.


Without them, non-organic potatoes would cost a lot more, but the chemical shows up in the water supplies and then everyone has to drink it, whether they garden organically or not. Again, highly ironic.


But local water supplies vary, from small boreholes to the mass water board pipelines and everything in between, so it's very relevant where the supply for this property comes from and whether there are alternatives, the chemical being all but impossible to filter out commercially.


About 1 in 8 supplies in this country is affected significantly, so your result is not terribly unusual. Like any other factor affecting property, you just need to assess how important this result is to you.

martindow

I think there are water filters for metaldehyde and probably some of the 30 other things your water supply has failed on. Maybe it would be worth showing the analysis to water filter companies to see what they could offer.

betsy123_2

hi...


is this with a private water supply?




if so who carried it out?


we need our testing to purchase the property

Kat88

Yep as indicated it's slug pellets but it's not just farmers to clarify, it is widely used by gardeners too. It's nearly impossible to remove from the water supply and so causes an issues for water companies. It depends on the limits found (and therefore why it failed) as to whether it's dangerous or not. The rule for drinking water at the moment is no more than 0.1mg per litre of water I think...

Guardian article here on it: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/10/slug-poison-drinking-water-metaldehyde