With a drinking water plan, a set of measures, Flemish Minister of Agriculture and the Environment Jo Brouns wants to significantly reduce the presence of all kinds of pesticides in drinking water. There continues to be discussion about how strict these measures should be. The pesticide glyphosate has been under fire in agriculture for years and strict standards have been introduced.
Recently carcinogenic PFAS compounds and 1,2,4-triazole also appeared in our drinking water, the latter being a residual product of fungicides. The latest substance of concern is TFA (tri-fluoride acetic acid). In almost one in five samples of drinking water, the presence exceeds a new European guideline standard, according to a study by the Flemish Environment Agency (VMM).
Polarization
“We don’t really know today whether we can actually measure this properly,” says Pieter Spanoghe, professor of Crop Protection at Ghent University. “We are talking about standards. This is not about a gram, this is not about a milligram, but about a microgram or a nanogram. That is one billionth of a kilogram or even less. What we are talking about is very low. We cannot actually test whether it is toxic or not in humans, because it is so little.”
The professor regrets that the discussion is causing increasing polarization between farmers and companies on the one hand and ecologists on the other. “We are going to learn something new every day and new things every day, but we cannot stop living at this moment. In five or ten years we will be able to define safe use around this. This is toxic at certain high concentrations and we do not ingest them. A person will not drink more than 3 liters or 3.5 liters per day. So in that respect I think we can say: we are doing it safely.”
