2024-04-04 04:00:01
Published on 04/04/2024 06:00 Updated on 04/04/2024 06:49
Reading time: 3 min
Vittel brand water bottles in a French factory of the Nestlé Waters brand. (JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN / AFP)
Bacteria, pesticides, Pfas: a new ANSES document, revealed by franceinfo and Le Monde, confirms the widespread contamination of the Nestlé group’s natural mineral water sources in France. In this note, sent to the government last October, experts speak of an “insufficient level of confidence” to ensure “the health quality of finished products”.
“The health safety of our products has always been guaranteed and remains our top priority”. This was the response sent to us by the Nestlé group at the end of January, when Franceinfo revealed the use of illicit treatments to purify its natural mineral waters.
Contaminated water but treated like ordinary tap water. An alleged deception concealed for years by the multinational, which went so far as to hide filters in electrical cabinets to deceive health inspection agents. But according to Nestlé, this vast deception had been put in place for a good cause, that is to say to guarantee the health safety of its products. However, an expertise carried out on behalf of the National Food Safety Agency (Anses) by the Nancy hydrology laboratory, and which Franceinfo and the newspaper Le Monde revealed on Thursday April 4, seems much less affirmative to this subject.
“Insufficient” level of confidence
At the origin of this expertise commissioned by the government, there was first a request for scientific and technical support from the regional health agencies Grand Est and Occitanie, where the two bottling plants of the Nestlé group are located in France. . In a letter dated June 2023, annexed to the expertise, the director of ARS Occitanie, Didier Jaffre, requests the services of the health agency “with regard to vulnerability” water resources at the Vergèze site, where the Perrier brand is produced. In this letter, he mentions the “presence of prohibited processing“in the factory, a “regular contamination of raw water on at least five of the seven boreholes”et “the presence of micropollutants”.
It was last October that the ANSES experts, who specified in their report that they only had access to information to carry out their mission “truncated and fragmented”, submitted their findings to the Ministry of Health. And they are final: the non-conformities detected attest to a “insufficient level of confidence” pour “guarantee the health quality of finished products”that is to say natural mineral waters marketed by the Nestlé group.
Because the contamination of resources is widespread, whether in the Grand Est region (Hépar, Vittel and Contrex), or in Occitanie (Perrier). The note reports regular microbiological contamination (coliform bacteria, Escherichia coli, enterococci) on numerous wells “can repeatedly achieve high concentration”while the regulations on natural mineral waters do not tolerate the presence of any bacteria in the water, whether after or before bottling.
Sources that should no longer be exploited for bottled water
The report also points to the presence of chemical contaminants, in particular Pfas, these so-called eternal pollutants massively used by industry, and pesticides and their degradation products, the sum of which can, for certain catchments, “exceed 0.1 micrograms per liter”that is to say the regulatory threshold for natural mineral water.
In their conclusions, the experts recommend that the authorities implement a reinforced surveillance plan for Nestlé factories, “considering the multiple reports of contamination of fecal origin”, “the notable chronic presence of micropollutants”et “the absence of a parameter allowing the monitoring of viral contamination of water”. But above all, they claim not to formulate “no recommendation” for finished products, because the non-conformities detected “should not lead to the production of bottled water”. Clearly, contaminated sources should no longer be exploited to produce natural mineral water, as still seems to be the case.
This is not the first time that the government has been alerted to a potential health risk. In a report submitted to the government in July 2022, but remained confidential until the revelations of the Investigation Unit of Radio France and the newspaper Le Monde, inspectors from the general inspection of social affairs (Igas) already affirmed that it “it would not be prudent to conclude that the health risk was perfectly controlled”notably “microbiological” waters of the Nestlé group. The inspectors were then concerned about the potential withdrawal of illicit treatments put in place to purify the water, “which would be likely to cause a health risk”.
However, to this day, if Nestlé continues to use, with the government’s consent, micro-filters prohibited by European regulations, the company claims to have removed all other illicit treatments (carbon filters, UV) which are nevertheless necessary for ensure effective water disinfection. This is squaring the circle. By resorting to treatments, regulations do not allow Nestlé to continue to market its products under the name natural mineral water, but without them, the health quality of its waters does not seem to be guaranteed. It is therefore perhaps the continued operation of its water production plants which is now being questioned.
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