water quality – Public Health Expert, University of Otago, New Zealand

Dr Tim Chambers, Prof Nick Wilson, Jayne Richards, A/Prof Simon Hales, Dr Mike Joy, Prof Michael Baker (author affiliations*)

Increasing water-related health threats, notably the waterborne campylobacter outbreak in Havelock North, have highlighted failings in NZ’s regulatory system for drinking water. In this blog we consider how the new Water Services Bill might provide a framework to enable the new water regulator, Taumata Arowai, to oversee, administer and enforce new drinking water regulations. We also detail how addressing the upstream determinants of water-related disease burden is a far better approach than treating water that has already become contaminated. The COVID-19 experience also raises the benefits of consolidating NZ’s public health organisations into a single highly competent national public health agency, which may have implications for reform of drinking water safety.

Continue reading →

Nick Wilson, Leah Grout, Mereana Wilson, Anja Mizdrak, Phil Shoemack, Michael Baker

Protecting waterways has the benefits of: (1) protecting water from hazardous microbes; (2) minimising cancer risk and other problems from nitrates in water; (3) avoiding algal blooms that are hazardous to health; (4) protecting mahinga kai uses (cultural importance and food security); (5) facilitating safe recreational water use; (6) minimising flooding risks from silted up waterways; and (7) protecting renewable energy from waterway sediments. In this blog we briefly consider these issues and why health workers and agencies should now do submissions on protecting waterways to the Ministry for the Environment, as part of a current consultation process which ends on 31 October.

Continue reading →

Having trouble posting comments?

If you are having trouble seeing a green 'Post comment' button when you are trying to submit a comment, please check to see if you are using Internet Explorer. If so, follow these instructions:

1. Open the browser
2. Press the Alt key on your keyboard and this will make a menu bar at the top appear
3. Click on tools and then select compatibility view settings
4. Remove all ticks from the 3 boxes

This removes the compatibility setting on your browser and should allow you to see the button.

Notes about PHE blog:

· Peer review process: Where a blog post has a single author, then the content is always peer-reviewed by at least one senior academic in public health. This is to help ensure that statements have a reasonable basis in terms of scientific plausibility and to ensure that uncertainty is appropriately acknowledged where statements have speculative aspects. For multi-authored blogs there can also be additional peer-review. Of note is that the PHE blog posts are often well-referenced so that readers can readily check the background science and arguments.

· Competing interests: Where a blog post author has a commercial competing interest then this will be acknowledged in a statement at the end of the blog post.

· Relationship with the parent institution: Any views expressed in these blog posts are those of the author(s) alone and not their parent institution. This is consistent with the meaning of academic freedom under the NZ Education Act 1989 (section 161). Furthermore, in a free society, it is undesirable for universities to vet or otherwise control statements by academic staff.

· Comments posted to this blog: These will usually only be included if they add intellectual content to the discussions and are not abusive etc.

Public Health Expert

Recent Posts

Archives

Tag Archives: water quality

Reducing the health burden from contaminated drinking water in NZ: Opportunities arising from the new Water Services Bill

Protecting Fresh Waterways in Aotearoa/NZ: The Strong Public Health Case

Having trouble posting comments?

Notes about PHE blog: