News: Risk of water contamination in Switzerland?

The now infamous E. coli bacterium, which has gripped Europe in recent months, seems to be setting its sights on Switzerland. Indeed, according to experts, "the danger of microbiological contamination of drinking water has been largely underestimated until now." According to the latest analyses, wastewater treatment plants are still poorly monitored, and the recent discovery of the bacteria in a stream near Frankfurt is not entirely surprising. The German newspaper Der Spiegel recently reported that the toll in Germany stands at 43 deaths and 3,500 illnesses due to the effects of this bacterium. Is Switzerland at risk of following the same path?

For their part, the authorities maintain that wastewater treatment plants are analyzed several times a day. While this may be true for large plants, it is not the case for smaller ones, where checks are carried out at best once a year. And this is the case for most of them (900 wastewater treatment plants) in Switzerland.

For nearly two weeks, market gardeners have been unable to sell some of their vegetables, particularly cucumbers. It's worth recalling that at the beginning of the month, 180,000 of these cucurbits were destroyed after it was proven shortly thereafter that sprouted seeds were the primary source of the bacterial transmission. Indeed, following the contamination of ten people in France, a study was conducted which revealed that these individuals had consumed sprouted seeds in salads; these included fenugreek, mustard, and arugula seeds.

If it were to turn out that the French seed producer sent batches to other European countries, there would be a possibility that an alert would be triggered by the European Union.