Over 530 km of asbestos cement pipes in Regina: investigation by W5

W5 investigates aging asbestos pipes across Canada and the potential health hazards if it ends up in your tap water. Watch W5's 'Something in the Water' Saturday at 7 p.m. on CTV.

Regina has 531 kilometres of asbestos cement pipes, according to findings by a W5 investigation.

CTV Regina Morning Live spoke with W5 correspondent Eric Szeto on Friday to learn more about the research.

Szeto said asbestos cement pipes were a popular material decades ago before it was discovered how toxic and harmful asbestos could be.

“It was so popular at one point, there was close to two million kilometres of this pipe around the world, including right here in Canada, but as these pipes start to age, as this infrastructure starts to go, they tend to fail catastrophically,” he said.

“There’s concern that these fibres go off, break off these pipes, and end up going into your taps, and you end up drinking it.”

W5 spent several months trying to figure out where the pipes are located and whether or not there is asbestos in their water. Part of their investigation brought them to the Queen City.

“We reached out to over 100 communities across the country,” he said. “Ninety per cent of the communities that responded still use asbestos in their piping, including Regina, where there’s over 500 kilometres of this stuff.”

“I think we should note with Regina, for example, there’s been thousands of pipe ruptures in recent decades, and that’s caused concern for activists that see this happening quite frequently.”

Szeto said to push the investigation forward, they wanted to find out where the asbestos is and if there is any in the water from the asbestos cement pipes.

“We ended up taking water samples from Canadian cities, including Regina, and got them sent off to a lab for analysis,” he said.

To find out the results, the full story, “Something in the Water,” will be aired on Saturday at 7 p.m. on CTV’s W5.

- With files from CTV’s Eric Szeto and CTV Regina Morning Live