President’s bulletin: water – a fundamental human right or a commodity?

Throughout the history of environmental health water in all “forms”, drinking water, water courses, drought and flooding has featured large in the Environmental Health portfolio. Who does not know of the Broad Street pump?

“The colossal power of life and death wielded by a water company supplying half a million customers is something for which, till recently, there has been no precedent in the history of the world. Such a power ought most sedulously to be guarded against abuse.”

These prophetic words were written by the British government’s first ever chief medical officer, John Simon, in 1867. He was responding to one of the country’s worst water-related scandals: the 1866 cholera epidemic that killed 5,596 people in the East End of London.

Enabling a wholesome safe water supply has been the preserve of Environmental Health Practitioners for the last 140 years. It is ongoing work. “Water is a fundamental part of all aspects of life”.

The first United Nations Global Conference on water took place in March 2023. A spotlight was cast on the lack of safe water to 2 billion people, 3 - 6 billion without access to safe sanitation, the increased pressure on water resources and ecosystems, including 80% of wastewater released untreated into the environment; and an exacerbated risk of droughts and floods.

These are issues that are now recurring at much greater frequencies in the UK. The average annual rainfall in the UK is approximately 1100mm, however, this is not evenly distributed and climate change pushes parts of the UK into drought conditions. We’ve also seen rainfall increase on our wettest days this summer, with wet weather responsible for poor harvests for farmers in August and September.

Continued discharges of waste water features highly. There are incidents of contaminated drinking water supplies such as the recent outbreak at Brixham, Devon. According to South West Water, the cryptosporidium outbreak ultimately affected 17,000 households.

At the UN conference powerful actors, including the World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and World Trade Organization, reasserted their vision of private finance playing a central role in water resource governance and the provision of water and sanitation services. Parallels will be drawn with the operation of the water industry in the UK.

Our new Water Quality Conference on 8 November will explore some of the most crucial issues facing water quality and the impact on environmental health to date. CIEH continues to partner with the charity Water for Kids (WfK) and WfK will be delivering a session at the conference on the challenges of water and projects to make a positive change.

Board, meetings and careers

Since my last bulletin I have presented at school careers fairs in and near Cardiff. It was great to see the interest in the profession from those present.

I chaired the Special Procedures In Wales event on 1 May in Llandrindod Wells. CIEH partnered with Public Health Wales to run this training conference which included practical sessions dedicated to acupuncture, piercing and tattooing.

It has been good to meet people in person. In June the joint CTSI/CIEH conference was held in Leeds which I attended. It was also pleasure attending the Institute of Acoustics 50th anniversary Welsh conference in Cardiff on 26 September.

Meanwhile, I also chaired the online Public Health Protection Conference. I have attended two Board meetings and a CIEH Board “away day” on 20 September.

Keep in touch

I have had various communications from members and have replied to all. Thanks to these members for taking the time to do this. Please utilise the letters page of EHN too.

Please do contact me at [email protected] with comments, concerns, suggestions and hopefully praise on occasion.