A source from Ministry of Construction indicates that the new drinking water quality standard, which is being jointly formulated by National Standardization Commission, Ministry of Construction, Ministry of Health and other agencies, has passed examination and review, and will be issued soon. It is the first time in 21 years that China revised the national standard of drinking water quality.

The new standard will have more than 100 items in its water quality indexs, a sharp increase from the 35 listed in the current standard. The newly added items focus on hazardous material including organic pollutants brought by industrialization. It is said the water quality requirement in the new standard has achieved the level of that in middle developed countries.

In the version for comments and suggestions provided by Ministry of Health in May, 2006, number of items of water quality indexes increased to 107 from 35. Microbiology items increased to 6 from 2 items, disinfectors for drinking water amounted to 4 instead of 1, items of inorganic compound in toxicology jumped to 22 from 10, and the thresholds of arsenic, lead, cadmium, nitrate and tetrachloride revised, organic compounds added with 47 items to 53.

The existing national drinking water code, Domestic Drinking Water Healthy Standards, was issued in 1985. In the past 21 years, water environment has been polluted to different extents with rapid industrialization but national drinking water standard has not been revised yet. In some cases, there is worse water quality in a few cities while the quality still meets the national standards.