2015 incidents of lead in drinking water in Hong Kong

Samples of potable water in Hong Kong were found to contain excessive levels of heavy metals including lead, nickel and cadmium in 2015.

The scandal began in June 2015 when the Democratic Party announced that testing of drinking water at Kai Ching Estate in Kowloon revealed lead contamination.

[1] The Hong Kong Housing Authority subsequently confirmed that the levels of lead exceeded the standard established by the World Health Organization.

[1] Since the initial discovery at Kai Tak, lead contamination of drinking water has been found at numerous other housing estates, schools, and public buildings across Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Housing Authority also discovered the presence of heavy metal in the water that was used was higher in comparison to the World Health Organization standards.

[3] Helena Wong who is a member of the Democratic Party led to the exposure of the presence of high levels beyond the set standard of lead occurrence in domestic used water in an estate in Kowloon City.

[11] However, Leung Chung-lap, assistant director of WSD, rebutted Lam's claim and said records showed that LP was also responsible for the pipelines into flats.

In the case of Kai Ching Estate where the scandal began, the plumbing contractor was the Ho Biu Kei Construction & Engineering Company.

Property management company Savills Guardian conducted testing at The Caldecott, a luxury estate in Kowloon Tong built in 2004, and found 19 micrograms of lead per litre of water sourced from a kitchen tap.

SKH St. Thomas' Primary School in Sham Shui Po, the first case, where test results on potable water were 330% above WHO guidelines was disclosed by Apple Daily on 23 August.

[21] The Baptist Rainbow Primary School in Wong Tai Sin announced the discovery of water contamination on 31 August 2015.

From 10 July, the government commenced supplying free bottled water to households in all affected estates, numbering 30,000 in total.

[25] Pre-empting the government confirmation of high concentration of lead at Kai Ching Estate, Chiang Lai-wan pro-establishment legislator from the DAB claimed that the Democratic Party's test results were scaremongering.

[26] Later, the media reported that her husband, Raymond Leung Hai-ming, was an independent non-executive director of China State Construction, the contractor of Kai Ching Estate.

[28] On 22 July 2015, the Democratic Party legislator Wu Chi-wai tabled the same motion on the LegCo panel on housing, but this was again rejected by the pro-establishment lawmakers by a margin of 11:8.

[29] On 13 August, the government appointed a Commission of Inquiry into Excess Lead Found in Drinking Water chaired by Mr Justice Andrew Chan, with Alan Lai as Commissioner.

[34] On 11 July 2016, a meeting was held for LegCo House Committee to discuss "Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Excess Lead Found in Drinking Water" released by the government previously.

[37] In November 2015, main contractors announced that they would pledge $20 million for paying the water bills of 29,000 affected households for about a year.