Events & Courses

In this talk Dr Louise Ander from the BGS will describe a multi-partner, inter-disciplinary project to examine risks to private water supply users from inorganic chemicals in groundwater being used for drinking water. There are a large number of private water supplies in the south-west of England, and research in Cornwall between Public Health England, Cornwall Council and the British Geological Survey on water chemistry aspects, as well as further work in which the University of Manchester were also partners which undertook human arsenic biomonitoring surveys will be presented. 

These studies have demonstrated that private water supplies to private domestic dwellings may frequently fall outside the relevant water quality standards for one or more chemical parameters. Notable in this is that 5% of the households sampled were drinking water with arsenic concentrations >10 µg/L (the drinking water standard). Biomonitoring has also demonstrated that these may provide the dominant source of exposure to arsenic in the householders using them.

Free entry and refreshments will be available from 5:30pm