What areas of water quality do Environmental Health Officers look at?
Private Water Supplies: For those who extract their private water supply from boreholes.
Bathing waters: to include swimming pools at leisure centres, Jacuzzi's, hydrotherapy pools.
Mains Water: To include Manufacturers of foods and drinks as well as occasionally looking at domestic supply.
We have a number of domestic and commercial private water supplies where we are the responsible authority for monitoring their quality both microbiologically (bacteria) and chemically (e.g. pesticides).
The legislation we use is made under the Water Industry Act 1991 and is called the Private Water Supplies Regulations 1991.
This tells us what the standards of the water should be and how often we have to test the water depending upon its use.
We are responsible for checking the quality of all our swimming pools to include leisure centres, private health clubs, hotels and out door pools, hospital hydrotherapy pools, Jacuzzi's and paddling pools.
We check these on a monthly basis for chemical levels as well as yearly for microbiological quality (bacteria) unless there is a complaint or a problem with the chemical tests, in which case the frequency will be increased.
We also examine the quality of the mains water in our food manufacturers to include breweries and other food industries. We may occasionally become involved in the testing of domestic mains water in addition to the statutory water undertaker.
In addition, the Drinking Water Inspectorate link to external website, who are the national body for ensuring the quality of water, provide an annual publication titled 'How Good is Your Drinking Water'
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