Mr BAYLEY - A number of Tasmanian scientists are raising concerns about BMAA and TasWater's position on not testing it and its potential presence in the water. TasWater has stated that Tasmanians can trust that their water is absolutely safe to drink, and I appreciate your comment there. Is it TasWater's position that BMAA does not pose a risk to human health or that it is not present? How are you making those statements, given there is scientific contention that it does make a contribution to neurological disease?
Mr THEO - That is not a statement of fact.
Mr BAYLEY - It is a scientific view, though.
Mr THEO - It is a hypothesis which has been dispelled by many organisations around the world. We do not determine what we test for and what we do test for. All I can tell you is the World Health Organization, the Australian Water Quality Regulators, and the US EPA have all come to the conclusion that there is no link.
If the National Health and Medical Research Council, which informs the Australian drinking water quality guidelines, took a different view and they required not just TasWater, it would be every water utility in the country and every water utility in the world, if the view was different and we were asked to test, we would.
Then the question also is, if you find something, that does not mean it has an impact on human health. What would the guideline value be? That you need to be below. All we are flagging is that eminent organisations are not of that view. We would respond should that view change. So that is our position.
Mr BAYLEY - Notwithstanding that there are no guidelines to adhere to, do you think it would be wise to begin testing so at least to understand the levels in the water that you are supplying and understand the scale of the issue should it become an issue or should the guidelines change?
Mr THEO - The first thing is there isn't a test that you can do that would replicate the result. There isn't a standardised test that I am aware of, so it doesn't exist.
The other part of your question?
Mr BAYLEY - It was employing the precautionary principle and testing for it. I am hearing you say that there is no test. Employing the precautionary principle to understand the extent of this toxin in the waters and, therefore, if things change, whether you need to change.
Mr THEO - The toxin, I think it is attached to blue-green algae. It is found in raw water. Matt, you might be able to correct me here, but if my memory serves me correctly, in the thousands of tests that we do in the raw water, I think we have only ever had one instance where blue green algae was of sufficient, high enough levels which required us to actually implement our risk management plan for water quality compliance, which we did.
Mr BAYLEY - That is based on the presence of algae?
Mr THEO - Blue green algae, yes. In raw water, what comes down the river, not what comes out of a plant.
Mr DERBYSHIRE - Just to add, everything that George has said I totally agree with. There is no internationally-accepted test to test for BMAA. We do monitor for algae in our raw water systems. As George said, we found it once out of thousands and thousands of tests. Even if it did exist in the raw water, our treatment removes it. Our treatment destroys the cyanobacteria cells through ozonation, UV, chlorination, filtering. Even then, we are trying to put forward here that across all those scientific organisations and regulators, even in Australia, the Water Services Association of Australia agree, that there is no scientific link between BMAA and MND.
Mr THEO - If I could also provide you with a fun fact, we do 273 000 tests a year. We do one test every two minutes across the state for water quality. It is a really high standard that we treat to, and secondly, that we test to. I reinforce the point that the water quality regulators and the health regulators determine what we do test for and what we don't test for.
