Since the establishment of CROSSLINK in 1986, the company has been very active and focused in the design and construction of various water purification system for numerous industries.

On the job, two of the many encounters with the doubtful quality of our city water triggered the company’s decision to move into the domestic market. Before these incidents, we assumed that household filter was not necessary, as our municipal water supply was adequate for direct consumption.

The first case took place in 1999, not long after the outbreak of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in Bukit Pelanduk, where many pig farmers died. Crosslink was awarded a project to design and build an ad hock water treatment plant to treat the water for the aftermath residents. Before commencing the project, I was shocked to realize that, as the water source was scarce, a highly inappropriate tube-well at a nearby oil palm plantation at Tanah Merah, was used in desperation. The existing so-called ‘water treatment system’ was solely chlorinated by bubbling chlorine gas directly into the reservoir, via a few porous diffusers.

After so many years, I still wonder if the residents had already been supplied with the barely-treated water before our system was installed, considering that the water supply source was scarce prior to my arrival. Also, had the JE outbreak not occurred and attracted media attention, would the residents have gotten a properly treated water supply? Until today, I had qualms that perhaps, the soiled water may also have had an indirect link to the JE outbreak, or was the outbreak truly from the spread of JE virus (Nipah virus)?

The second case took place when I was going through a project tender in 1993. While I was going through the documents of a fairly large international bidding project, I noticed a special note attached to the list of water analysis reports on our city water stating, ‘(in an epidemic)’ – documented just beside the Free chlorine content. To me, the comment by the consultant was a tad sarcastic as he assumed that our city water had to maintain such a high chlorine level because our country had been and would be encountering an epidemic forever.

Our municipal water authority may have their reasons to maintain this epidemically high chlorine content, but as a consumer and a professional myself, I could not sit still and do nothing. Distastefully, I noticed that the situation took a turn for the worse lately, as there is a considerable rise in the number of unprofessional traders, capitalizing on the problem of high chlorine content. Although these traders sell water filters that can remove chlorine, these filters also generate tasteless toxin in the process – poisoning households without consumers’ notice.

A few years ago, our health ministers disclosed the hard, cold statistics, through newspapers, that Malaysia had one of the highest cancer-rate among all countries in the world, and Chinese outnumber the other races. Coincidently, Chinese population also outnumber the other races in the installation of household water filter.

Until now, there are no updates on the statistic, and the most likely reason to this uncertainty is that no one has yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As years passed, Crosslink still insists that the major cause was the carcinogen-generating household water filter as mentioned in our book “The hidden cruel truth”.

At the ground level, utilizing basic scientific knowledge, we have no difficulty convincing the public to switch their trust from the commercial water filtration gimmick, to that of the World Health Organization’s recommendation. Although our explanation has never been disputed when we approached the public, the number of people we have met, as compared to the overall population, is just the tip of the iceberg.