According to a report by the National Food Safety Agency, more than a third of drinking water in France is polluted by chlorothalonil, a fungicide massively used by farmers but banned since 2020. For the Ministry of Ecological Transition, this pollution does not represent “no health risk”.
It is a disaster like drinking water producers have probably never experienced, the bill of which could amount to billions of euros and a large part of which risks remaining unmanageable for a long time. For several months, almost everywhere in France, public drinking water authorities and delegated companies have been alarmed to discover high concentrations of a degradation product (or “metabolite”) of chlorothalonil – a pesticide marketed by Syngenta, used since 1970 and banned in Europe in 2019.
These concerns are well founded. In a report to be made public on Thursday April 6, the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) confirms the almost generalized presence of the metabolite in question – R471811 – in metropolitan surface and underground waters. The latter was not researched until very recently, not all approved laboratories being able to measure it.
Even more alarming, the conventional treatment channels are unable to get rid of it: a large proportion of French people thus receive tap water that does not comply with regulatory quality criteria because of this single molecule, i.e. that its concentration exceeds the limit provided for by the regulations of 0.1 microgram per liter (µg/l). In January 2022, ANSES has classified R471811 as "relevant" (potentially problematic), it must therefore remain below this threshold in the same way as its parent molecule, considered as a probable carcinogen by the European health authorities and associated with the appearance of kidney tumors on laboratory animals. No health effect of the metabolite in question has been proven at these exposure doses, but the data are very incomplete.
The entire Paris Basin concerned
According to the ANSES probe, which is based on a non-exhaustive selection of distribution networks, around 34% of the water distributed in France does not comply with regulations – a figure which is only an estimate depending on the selection of samples made by the agency's experts. It is impossible, for the time being, to precisely determine the percentage of the population concerned, as R471811 has not yet been integrated into the surveillance plans of all the regional health agencies (ARS). The technical manager of a large public operator, speaking on condition of anonymity, considers himself “convinced that more than half of the French population is concerned” . Some bottled waters would not be spared.
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