The Government today announced updates to the routine drinking water testing programme and Enhanced Water Quality Monitoring Programme.

Three new parameters, namely "manganese", "cylindrospermopsins" and "saxitoxins", will be included in the routine drinking water testing programme, while the coverage of the existing parameter "microcystin-LR” will be expanded.

These revisions were proposed in accordance with the latest World Health Organization guidelines for drinking-water quality. The Drinking Water Safety Advisory Committee agreed to the revisions after deliberation.

Regarding "tetrachloroethene" and "uranium" covered under the current testing programme, previous routine drinking water quality monitoring showed that their contents were extremely low or even undetectable, far below the level that would pose a risk to health.

These two parameters will be excluded from the routine testing programme, but will be included in the surveillance list to facilitate the Water Supplies Department's surveillance monitoring from time to time.

As regards the Enhanced Water Quality Monitoring Programme, according to the monitoring data over the past years, the levels of antimony in drinking water samples collected have always been below the reporting limit.

Based on the advice of the Government-commissioned expert consultant, the department will stop testing antimony under the enhanced programme, while the testing of other items remain unchanged.

The proposal will be implemented from June.