300 Pontianak residents to undergo mercury test
Tuesday, November 21 2000 - 02:00 AM WIB
About 300 residents of West Kalimantan provincial capital of Pontianak, who drink waters supplied by the province-owned PDAM drinking water company, would undergo hair tests to check mercury contamination in their body.
The tests will be run by the province's health office, Kompas daily reported.
The paper quoted head of the province's health office Pendi Tjahja Perdjaman as saying on Monday that the tests followed reports that the river in the province had been contaminated by mercury waste disposed of by gold illegal miners in the province.
His office would also run tests on fish in the province's largest river of Kapuas, Pendi said, adding the provincial administration would formulate the policy to handle the mercury contamination based on the results of the tests.
Surveys made by several experts indicated that the mercury contents in the river of Kapuas, from the town of Sintang to Pontianak, had tens of times exceeded the maximum tolerable limit of 1 part per billion (ppb), he said.
Chemical expert Thamrin Usman of the Tanjungpura University in Pontianak had even said that the drinking water processed by PDAM contained mercury five times higher than the maximum tolerable limit. (*)