This Thursday morning, the pure player Mediapart published an article titled “Confidential Nestlé report reveals “high risk” of arsenic in Vittel waters.” After the scandal of the illicit treatment of mineral waters, arsenic is now in the mix. Which is not entirely trivial.
Because in popular culture, this metalloid represents the poison par excellence, the one that we spontaneously associate with the novels of Agatha Christie or the Borgia family. In our case, it is arsenites, arsenic oxides. Their presence in water is quite natural and is very rarely of anthropogenic origin. Here, the person responsible for the package is rather… geology.
Maximum threshold set at 10 micrograms per liter
Internationally, for water to be considered drinkable, the maximum threshold for this element has been set at 10 micrograms per liter.
This limit already raises questions, since the toxicological reference value, making it possible to quantify the risk to human health, is for arsenic at 0.3 micrograms per kilogram per day. Which should logically lower the threshold to 1 microgram per liter. Regardless, one fact remains: it is perfectly legal to dearsenic mineral water.
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But what are we talking about in this investigation by Pascale Pascariello? Well, from an internal audit dating from June 2022 and written in English for the managers of Nestlé Waters, which distinguishes 20 failures linked to activity in the Vosges. Among them, the concentration of arsenic which can sometimes reach 12-13 micrograms for the water of the hydromineral deposit C, known as Lower Triassic sandstone. A product which is not marketed in France as mineral water.
However, in this case, the world No. 1 in the food industry uses filters, legal as we have said, with manganese dioxide. The only problem is that the result is then diluted, just as legally, in untreated water to reach this famous threshold of 10 micrograms. It's this raw liquid that's the problem. While its arsenic density is supposed to be 24 micrograms, it can sometimes rise to 30. An increase which could cause a one-off overdose.
Conditional or not
On the side of the management of Nestlé Waters, we affirm that there is no subject: “There has never been arsenic in our bottled waters beyond the regulatory threshold. Our dedicated filtration process, authorized for mineral waters, allows us to always stay well below this threshold. All our daily tests confirm these results. »
And the report mentioned? A simple working basis: “The document on which Mediapart is based on an internal technical audit, which aims in particular to identify and anticipate potential risks. The elements mentioned about arsenic in no way correspond to a real situation. »
The Swiss group uses as proof the mention at the beginning of the paragraph of the expression: “In case of…”, in the case where… Except that we are well beyond the realm of hypotheses, according to the author of the article that we were able to reach. She assures us, in the report she obtained, we are not in the conditional!
“The Continuum of Deception”
The kind of situation that inevitably inspires Bernard Schmitt of the Eau 88 collective. An activist who has been discussing this carcinogenic agent for years in his interventions: “We are in the continuum of deception. We think we drink safe water. During the judicial convention, the prosecutor said: “The health of the population is not endangered”. This is false. Today, it is caused by arsenic. But at the end of 2023, when Nestlé said that they had stopped its filtration system, ANSES (National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety) said that this meant that the population who drinks this water is exposed to a viral risk. »
A new file summoning the notion of poison which risks further tarnishing the image of a mineral industry which did not necessarily need it.
France
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