Accra, Nov. 24, GNA – A workshop to build the capacity of researchers, postgraduate students, staff of GWCL and the Food and Drug Authority and other stakeholders in the water sector has ended.
The workshop aimed at bringing the attention of stakeholders in the water sector to focus on interactions between the water pollutants and the chemicals used for treatment.
Prof. Leonard Kofitse Amekudzi, Provost of the College of Science, said during treatment of drinking water, chemical disinfectants, like chlorine, are used to inactivate microorganisms and prevent their regrowth in distribution networks.
However, the disinfectants may interact with dissolved organic matter present in the water to produce undesired disinfection byproducts (DBPs), many of which are genotoxic and carcinogenic.
The workshop, organised by the Department of Environmental Science, KNUST, and the Université de Lille, France, with funding from the French Embassy in Ghana through the Nyansapo Project, was on the theme: “Water quality analysis and the detection of disinfection byproducts in water.”
Dr. Junias Adusei-Gyamfi, project lead for KNUST, said that even though more than 700 DBPs have currently been detected globally and many more are unknown, only seven are regulated in Ghana.
Even with that, the National Drinking Water Quality Management Framework, which is intended to regulate the seven DBPs, is not enforced due to the lack of capacity of local expertise to perform such analysis.
GNA