Moldova is placed on
the 69th spot among 122 most representative countries around the
world regarding the quality of drinking water, said scientist
Constantin Moraru, from the Institute of Geography and Geology
of the Moldovan Academy of Sciences.
Moraru said at a seminar on Wednesday that despite the location
between three rivers - Dniestr, Proute and Danube - the quality of
drinking water in Moldova is worse than in Romania and Ukraine.
"Bad drinking water represents a factor of risk for the Moldovan
population, in particular, for rural people, because they consume
water from wells with too many nitrates. The situation is not
better in Chisinau where the water cleaning station uses half of
its capacity due to its outdated equipment," Moraru stressed.
Earlier, environmentalists signalled that about 70 percent of wells
and other sources in Moldova contain nitrates, while water sources
in the suburbs of Chisinau contain 90 percent of nitrates. According
to environmentalists, breeding farms from rural settlements
represent a major source of pollution. Water pipes need renovation
and the rural regions must be supplied with drinking water from
wells controlled by the state in order to improve this situation,
environmental organisations say.
Data from the Ecologist Movement show that 50.3 percent of residents
from settlements where the wells contain nitrates suffer from
chronic diseases of liver compared with 8.1 percent in the regions
with a normal concentration of nitrates. Thirty-three percent of
teenagers from polluted regions suffer from delayed biological
development, and their number accounts to 9.7 percent in areas
with a normal ecologic state.