Public Consultation on Draft Guidance for the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines

Overview

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is inviting feedback on draft guidance material developed for the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (the Guidelines) on ammonia, nickel and chlorate, and ongoing edits and corrections to the Guidelines.

NHMRC is seeking feedback relating to the following guidance material:

• Draft chemical fact sheet – Ammonia

• Draft chemical fact sheet – Nickel

• Draft chemical fact sheet – Chlorine dioxide, chlorite, chlorate

• Proposed consequential updates throughout the Guidelines to ensure alignment with the draft chemical fact sheets

• Proposed edits and corrections to Chapter 5 of the Guidelines (Microbial Quality of Drinking Water), Appendix 3 (Derivation of microbial treatment targets for enteric pathogens), updates to ISO and AS/NZS Standards, and other amendments throughout the Guidelines.

The draft guidance material is available for download below. Supporting information for each chemical fact sheet review (including review reports) and an Administrative report outlining the guideline development process, are also available for your information.

Feedback on other aspects of water quality management or on other sections of the Guidelines are beyond the scope of this consultation and will not be considered. 

What are the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines?

The Guidelines are part of the National Water Quality Management Strategy and are designed to provide a framework for safe, good quality drinking water, how it can be achieved and how it can be assured.

Since the Guidelines were published in 2011, NHMRC maintains the Guidelines through a rolling review process to ensure they represent the latest scientific evidence on good quality drinking water. Updates to specific sections, including the chemical fact sheets, are prioritised based on expert advice and availability of new or emerging scientific evidence.

What is changing?

Based on a review of the available evidence, NHMRC is proposing:

• Updates to chemical fact sheets on ammonia, nickel and chlorate (within the broader chlorine dioxide, chlorite, chlorate fact sheet)
• Edits and corrections to Chapter 5 (Microbial Quality of Drinking Water), Appendix 3 (Derivation of microbial treatment targets for enteric pathogens), ISO and AS/NZS Standards and other amendments through the Guidelines.

The draft guidance material proposes retaining the current aesthetic guideline value for ammonia, raising the health-based guideline value for nickel and establishing a new health-based guideline value for chlorate in drinking water.

Table 1. Potential guideline recommendations for public consultation