As France faces a scorching new heatwave this week, Paris authorities have urged residents to keep calm and carry on drinking tap water after rumours spread that the capital’s water supplies had been contaminated with harmful levels of the radioactive isotope tritium, reports The Guardian.
The Paris region prefecture insisted the city’s tap water did not present any risk for public health and said rumours circulating on social media were “fake news”.
City water authorities reinforced the message: “Tap water can be drunk without restriction,” it wrote on Twitter.
The scare was originally sparked by a report by the French organisation the Association for the Control of Radioactivity in the West (ACRO), which published a report claiming that 6.4 million people in the Paris region as well as the Loire and Vienne areas were drinking tap water contaminated with tritium.
The report was based on health ministry data and had a map showing average tritium levels in tap water across the country. Although they are higher in the mentioned regions, the report insisted “no value exceeds the quality criteria (100 Bq/L) introduced by the authorities”.
However, the rumour spread on social media after a message, allegedly sent by a Paris “nurse and masseur” to her friends went viral on WhatsApp. In the message, the tritium had become a “titanium presence” and the sender’s friends were advised not to drink tap water.
As France prepared for temperatures to top 40C in large areas of the country and warned that wine and agricultural production had been hit by last month’s heatwave, the Paris water company sought to reassure customers.
“Drinking Paris water poses no health threat; tritium is present in infinitely small quantities in water without any risk in the short, medium or long term,” tweeted the water authority Eau de Paris.