Eighteen percent of water supplied by the Delhi Jal Board is unfit for drinking and every fifth person in the city is consuming contaminated water, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's Public Health Committee revealed today.

At a time when 60 per cent of the households in Delhi consume Delhi Jal Board water, it comes as a surprise that 18 per cent of water supplied is polluted as it contained human faeces.

This came to light after the MCD's Public Health Committee carried out a test of samples of Jal Board Water.

“Consuming contaminated water can cause water-borne diseases such as cholera, gastroenteritis, typhoid, jaundice among others. We wanted to find if the water supplied by Delhi Jal Board was fit for consumption and 616 samples were collected from various parts of the city. Of these, 111 samples were found to have faecal contamination,” Dr V.K. Mongia, chairman, MCD health committee, said.

“The colony count i.e. measurement of the growth of bacteria in a water sample revealed that every 100 ml sample of water contained more than 10 bacteria, most of them because of faecal contamination. By all standards, such water is unfit for for consumption,” he said.

The samples were collected in January and February and were tested by the Public Health Laboratory of MCD.

The BJP president, Mr Vijender Gupta, today asked the government to look into the matter.

Mr Monga pointed out that faeces from the sewerage mixes with most of the waters that is supplied in Delhi that led to such contamination.

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