> On 16 December 2013, the residents [...] heard on the news that their tap water had been switched over to a different source. The water supply, which had won awards for being one of the cleanest in Sweden, had been found to contain high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or Pfas.
> News reports said the chemicals had seeped into the municipal water system from the firefighting foam used at the airbase. It had been going on for years, even decades, but no one had previously thought to check the water for Pfas...
bell-cot•1h ago
> News reports said the chemicals had seeped into the municipal water system from the firefighting foam used at the airbase. It had been going on for years, even decades, but no one had previously thought to check the water for Pfas...
If a small nation somehow acquired a competent government - how much would it actually cost to run a national testing laboratory for municipal water supplies? One that didn't just test for some "usual top 12" contaminants, but ran the water samples through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectroscopy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence - or whatever modern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_chemistry methods were the most suitable to know what's actually in the water?