Water debacle....

Earlier today the Oman Observer published a story on its website that a number of brands of bottled water had a presence of bromate potassium beyond permissible limits and that these brands had been banned from sale here. The news article (linked here) then went all around Muscat's social networks and was then picked up by other newspapers later in the afternoon.

The news article from the Oman Observer went on to include two photo's of what appeared to be lab reports from Ministry of Regional Municipalities and Water Resources which are available at the Oman Observer online news story. 

The article mentions the following brands of bottled water are to be removed from shelves here in Oman because of the failure in lab tests from the Ministry of Regional Municipalities and Water Resources:  The brands are Oasis (not to be confused with Oman Oasis), Tanuf, El Jabal El Akhdar and Salsabil.

However, it appears that there may have been a mix up at the lab when the water was tested and I understand that the water is in fact actually fine, and the levels of bromate potassium are acceptable. I guess we'll find out in the papers tomorrow.

If you are like me, and don't know what bromate potassium is, according to wikipedia it is, "classified as a category 2B carcinogen (possibly carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)". A handy little nugget of information that none of the newspapers here in Oman thought you needed to know.

So, in other words its not very nice stuff then. The Oman Observer article then goes on to expand that the various production date (or dates - it doesn't clarify) have been removed from shelves of shops here in Oman. However the article does not mention what production date (or dates) are affected - so if you bought one of the affected dates then there apparently isn't a way to tell. Nice.

Anyway, hopefully its all a storm in a teacup, or something like that.

UPDATE: A helpful person on Muscat Where Can I Find commented a hand written translation of what I assume is one of the two arabic letters (reports) shared by the Oman Observer which details the production (and expiry) dates of the apparently contaminated water:

le fin.