In a move that underscores growing public health anxieties over the capital’s drinking water, the government has dispatched Dhaka WASA water samples to a specialised laboratory in Sweden after preliminary tests detected alarming levels of carcinogenic “forever chemicals”.
Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister Abdul Moyeen Khan broke the news in parliament on Monday during a written response to MP Mobasher Alam Bhuiyan.
The revelation follows a joint probe sparked by a Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University study, which quietly collected water samples across eight Dhaka WASA’s water ATM booths.
Initial testing at a European laboratory delivered a troubling verdict: one of the samples harboured Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), man-made, highly persistent toxic compounds linked to cancer, organ damage, and immune dysfunction, well above international safety thresholds.
Although the initial sampling was carried out without prior notification to Dhaka WASA, Minister Moyeen Khan assured lawmakers that the government is treating the situation with paramount urgency.
“The matter is being treated with the utmost importance,” he said, noting that Dhaka WASA officials met with the research team to scrutinise the unpublished findings.
Because Bangladesh and its immediate neighbours lack the advanced laboratory infrastructure needed to perform specialised PFAS verification, an 11-member joint committee was constituted on 27 October to coordinate international testing.
Following the panel’s recommendations, fresh samples are now bound for Sweden for definitive re-analysis.
Addressing concern over the broader safety of the capital’s water supply, the minister highlighted that Dhaka WASA operates around 300 water ATM booths citywide.
He added that the utility currently supplies roughly 3.14 billion litres of water daily to meet consumer demand without deficit, performing routine quality checks on 40 to 50 samples each day.
As the Swedish lab results pends, the government faces mounting scrutiny to ensure that one of the nation’s most critical public utilities remains safe to drink.
