Harmful Effects Of Regular Consumption Of Satchet water (Pure Water)

        Sachet water consumers are not fully unaware of the potential health risks associated with exposure to water borne contaminants which have often led to diseases like diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever, legionnaire’s disease and parasitic diseases.                

                            

The lack of access to clean, hygienic and affordable drinking water has pushed some ignorant citizens to patronize the most available source of packaged water- Sachet water. This has resulted in the wide spread incidences of hospitalization due to Typhoid fever, diarrhea, and many other water borne diseases.

How Sachet Water Gets Contaminated

• Sachet water packaging material 

This material is made of polythene bags composed primarily of synthetic petroleum derivatives which deteriorates water in them, due to their high environmental degradability.

Exposing this sachet water to rays of sunlight even for a brief period of time would result in the melting of some of the synthetic petroleum into the water. The dissolved chemicals are highly carcinogenic.

Also there is that high possibility of consuming millions of micro-plastics in just a drink of sachet water.

 

• Unhygienic Handling Of Sachet Water By Vendors 

Manufacturers, distributors and the street hawkers of sachet water are most times culpable of non- hygienic handling of these items. Some do not even wear the necessary protective gears while producing. The hawkers and distributors do not see the need to sanitize their hand before handling these bags of water.

                            

Since the sachets do not have any lid, a seller could use a dirty hand infested with harmful bacteria to pick up a sachet for a customer who will take the same side held by the seller to the mouth, thereby introducing bacteria directly into his system.

 Not only that, the polythene bags also build-up germs and micro organisms as traces of bacterial features such as Bacillus sp., Pseudomonas sp., Klebsiella sp., Streptococcus sp., oocysts of Cryptosporidia sp., have been found on these bags durring laboratory examinations. Microbial pathogens connected with water pollution which include Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio, Campylobacter, Yersinia, Cryptosporidium and Giardia species, are also detected in most of these packaged water.

• Poor Treatment Of Sachet Water

Clean water should pass through certain levels of treatment according to local standards. some producers have been caught packaging water into sachets directly from boreholes or wells without any form of treatment. 

the regulatory authorities are also to be blamed as they have in most cases failed to inspect most of these factories and carry out standard test on the produced sachet water.

This bad practice has exposed millions of consumers of this product to health related problems 

High Point

The high point of all of these is that one has to be very careful when deciding what type of packaged water he should consume. If you are ever in doubt about the quality and safety of the water you are about drinking, please do not drink such water even if it taste good or looks clean. instead it is better to buy package water from certified brands or boil and treat your drinking water at home