- Kliptown resident Cavlyn Fredericks found small silver balls in her drinking water, which she suspected to be mercury.
- Her kids spent three days in hospital after experiencing vomiting and diarrhoea, and blood samples confirmed low levels of mercury in their system.
- Joburg Water sent a team to collect samples in the area on 3 December, and has denied the existence of mercury in the water.
Kliptown mother Cavlyn Fredericks and her family have been left afraid to drink the water running from their taps after three children got sick from suspected mercury poisoning.
Fredericks and her mother Irene were boiling water on 18 November when they found three silver balls in their kettle.
“My mom thought it was those silver balls you play marbles with, and I said it was too small for that. And how did it get in there?” she told News24.
READ | Residents in parts of Cape Town advised to avoid drinking tap water due to strange taste, smell
When her mom tried to remove the ball with her finger, she said, they multiplied
“Two days later, my two-year-old got sick. He was vomiting and had a fever and runny tummy. We didn’t know it was because of the water. My six-year-old also got sick. She had cramps and a runny tummy, so did my 12-year-old,” said Fredericks.
She posted pictures of what she had found in her kettle on her community group and one resident said it might be mercury. A frantic Fredericks started googling what mercury was and where it could have come from, considering they do not live close to a mine and had not done any plumbing recently.
“This whole ordeal has been something else. It’s hard to find structural support, especially with the mercury situation, and it affected my children. My two-year-old had to get a referral to Lilian Ngoyi Hospital and, from there, they referred us to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital.
“They were checked immediately and spent three days in hospital. My two-year-old has issues with his liver. My children have to go for check-ups for three months. Their next check-up is in January,” said an emotional Fredericks
Residents in Kliptown found small silver balls in their water which they suspect is mercury
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She added:
My children were tested for mercury because blood and urine samples were taken which showed low levels of mercury at the moment. We are still waiting for more results for the little one. We are waiting for more urine tests.
The Daily Maverick, which first reported on the matter, visited the area and took samples of what was suspected to be mercury to the Modderfontein Laboratory Services. They reported that, after the sample was observed, it was confirmed to be mercury.
Rico Euripidou, the director of environmental justice organisation groundWork, explained how mercury was an element that can never be destroyed.
“The fact that it was found in the water, was visible to the people, and that they could confirm that it was mercury – and I have [also] subsequently read reports that confirms that it was mercury – implies that it got into the watered piping system in one way or another. Let’s be clear, it shouldn’t be there. There shouldn’t be mercury in people’s water supply,” he said.
Euripidou said that mercury was of great concern to the global public health governance system because of its profound impact on health.
“In the early and late 19th century, when occupational health diseases became evident to the modern medical practitioners, one – in particular – was people that made felt hats. You know, these tall black hats, and there is a particular story in Alice in Wonderland about the Mad Hatter, and there is a reason for that. And that is because those felt makers, those hatters used mercury to make the felt soft, and in doing so, they incurred occupational health disease, it would affect their nervous systems,” he said.
He explained how mercury in different forms had differing effects on the human body.
He said:
Now, if you had to swallow metallic mercury, if you had to swallow one of those tiny silver shiny balls in a glass of water, the likelihood is that it would pass right through your system. It won’t get absorbed in the gut and it’ll just pass through you.
“However, if you did something simple like boil the water and those mercury droplets then transformed into a vapour form, so that you could breathe in, then that mercury vapour would enter into your lungs.
“It would get carried to different organs and if it makes its way into your brain and your central nervous system. Then you can expect severe symptoms like peripheral neuropathy etc. It will have a material impact on that person’s health,” he said.
Meanwhile, Johannesburg Water said, in a 15 December statement, that they had escalated the matter after receiving a complaint. However, they denied the existence of mercury in the family’s water.
“Johannesburg Water would like to confirm that the laboratory test results of all four-sample points did not detect mercury as samples were found to be compliant with drinking water standards as per SANS 241 (2015). The entity prides itself on providing residents with good quality drinking water with the monthly water quality compliance reports available to the public from our website,” they said.
‘I am still waiting for solid results’
Euripidou, however, said that cross-contamination of portable water supplies was hugely uncommon, but that if it (contamination) was detected, water engineers usually tried to flush it out of the system.
He said:
Unless you find the root cause of this mercury getting into the water system, then you’re not really addressing the problem and that is what has to happen. There has to be a systematic investigation on the ground by environmental health practitioners.
“They have to do inspections, find out which households have recorded mercury in their water supply and they probably have to do a questionnaire of lots of different households to find out if anybody else has found mercury.
“They probably have to do a fact sheet and explain to people what mercury is and what they should be looking for, and if they see it, they should report it. So you can either do it through house-to-house surveys or through public meetings or through churches or whatever. They really have to find out the root cause of this. Unless they do that, they’re not addressing the problem,” he said.
In the meantime, the Fredericks family have been relying on bottled water out of fear of their tap water. When News24 visited the family, newly elected Patriotic Alliance councillor for Ward 17, Dwain Ponsonby, was there delivering bottled water.
Residents in Kliptown found small silver balls in their water which they
Ponsonby said that since Fredericks had brought the matter to his attention, several other residents had complained about similar illnesses and rashes. He said that they were working on getting a water tanker for the Fredericks family.
“There was a planned water outage scheduled from 15 November. After that, I received a call from Cavlyn to say they had spotted mercury. I immediately spoke to the authorities, and they have said they needed to look into it.
“I am still waiting for solid results, which I have requested from Joburg Water and environmental health. We have seen Cavlyn and her children suffering, so we want to see if there is mercury in the water, but there has been proof now that the children have been affected by the mercury. We now need to establish the truth and do proper fact-finding.”
On 17 December, City of Johannesburg spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane told News24 that, at the moment, the City could not confirm anything and that they were waiting on results from the environmental health inspectors, which would inform their interventions.
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