2015-09-11 HKT 16:03
A concern group has called on the government to provide blood tests for all elderly people living in public housing estates where tap water has been found to be contaminated with lead.
The group, Lead in Drinking Water Concern Group, arranged for blood samples to be taken from 25 residents in Kai Ching Estate in Kowloon City where the contamination was first discovered.
It said the results showed that an elderly couple and a woman in her mid-50s had lead levels above the standard considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The government has arranged blood tests for residents in all the 11 public estates now confirmed to have been affected by lead-contaminated water. But it considers only children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers as the high risk group.
Earlier, the group commissioned a government-approved laboratory to test water samples from 704 flats in Kai Ching Estate and 328, or nearly half of them, were found to have elevated levels of the heavy metal in their tap water. The water sample from one of the flats had 78 times the WHO limit.
The group, Lead in Drinking Water Concern Group, arranged for blood samples to be taken from 25 residents in Kai Ching Estate in Kowloon City where the contamination was first discovered.
It said the results showed that an elderly couple and a woman in her mid-50s had lead levels above the standard considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The government has arranged blood tests for residents in all the 11 public estates now confirmed to have been affected by lead-contaminated water. But it considers only children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers as the high risk group.
Earlier, the group commissioned a government-approved laboratory to test water samples from 704 flats in Kai Ching Estate and 328, or nearly half of them, were found to have elevated levels of the heavy metal in their tap water. The water sample from one of the flats had 78 times the WHO limit.
http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1210811-20150911.htm
