France Drinking Water Quality Dataset

4,855

Observations

1,387

Series

101

Subjects

2022–2025

Period covered

What this looks like

One real series from the dataset, and real rows from the head of its published extract. Neither is a mock-up: the rows below are the same rows, unchanged, that are in the file you would download.

Sample rows

12 of 5,171 rows Taken from the start of observations-drinking-water-fr-hubeau-eau-potable.csv. These are sample rows, not the dataset.

Sample rows from the France Drinking Water Quality Dataset extract
`metric_id`	`subject_id`	`subject_kind`	`value`	`censored`	`censor_operator`	`censor_threshold`	`censor_limit`	`censor_reported`	`unit`	`period_start`	`period_end`	`period_kind`	`basis`	`confidence`	`source_id`	`source_ref`	`qualifier`	`superseded`	`retrieved`
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-01	geography	1843	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2022-01-01	2022-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-01	geography	1693	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2023-01-01	2023-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-01	geography	1539	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2024-01-01	2024-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-01	geography	1731	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2025-01-01	2025-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-02	geography	4600	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2022-01-01	2022-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-02	geography	4720	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2023-01-01	2023-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-02	geography	3822	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2024-01-01	2024-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-02	geography	3161	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2025-01-01	2025-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-03	geography	732	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2022-01-01	2022-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-03	geography	689	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2023-01-01	2023-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-03	geography	711	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2024-01-01	2024-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01
drinking-water-sample-count	fr-dept-03	geography	873	—	—	—	—	—	samples	2025-01-01	2025-12-31	year	aggregated	high	fr-hubeau-eau-potable	SISE-Eaux	—	—	2026-10-01

Download these rows as CSV — the same twelve, with the column header, for testing a loader before committing to the full file.

Methodology

Computed by Hydrionis from per-sample results published by the regional health agencies through Hub’Eau. The governing decision is the treatment of censored results: French results below the laboratory detection limit are published with a textual result beginning "<" alongside a numeric field set to zero. Hydrionis treats the textual form as authoritative. Censored results are counted, published as a quantified-share series, excluded from every mean rather than substituted with zero or half the detection limit, and never counted as exceeding a limit. The resulting mean is therefore an upper bound and is labelled as one. Only complete calendar years are aggregated, and a department-year needs thirty results before a rate is published.

What this dataset cannot tell you

Read before relying on these figures

A mean computed over quantified results only is biased upward. Where the quantified share is low — as it is for PFOS almost everywhere — the mean describes the detectable minority of samples rather than the water supplied, and must be read with that share.
Detection limits improve over time and differ between laboratories, so a rise in the quantified share can reflect better analysis rather than more of the substance.
Department-level statistics average over supplies that may differ greatly. A department with one contaminated small supply and a hundred clean ones will not look contaminated.
An exceedance in a department-year does not mean non-compliant water was supplied: regulators act on breaches, and the sample is what triggers that action.
Restricted to five determinands from a monitoring programme covering hundreds. Absence of a determinand here is not evidence about it.

Coverage

Subjects	French departments, metropolitan and overseas — 101 held
Period	2022–2025
Units	%, mg/l as NO₃, samples, µg/l
Update cadence	Annually
Identifier	`france-drinking-water-quality` v1.0.0

Fields

Data dictionary →

Every metric this dataset carries, with the unit it is stored in and the geography level it is reported at. Full definitions are in the data dictionary.

Identifier	Field	Unit	Reported at
`dw-nitrate-concentration`	Nitrate in drinking water Mean concentration of nitrate, expressed as the nitrate ion in treated drinking water, computed over quantified samples only.	mg/l as NO₃	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-nitrate-quantified`	Nitrate quantified sample share Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for nitrate, expressed as the nitrate ion that returned a numeric result rather than a result below the detection limit.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-nitrate-exceedance`	Nitrate limit exceedance rate Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for nitrate, expressed as the nitrate ion whose result exceeded the regulatory limit of 50 mg/l as NO₃.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-lead-concentration`	Lead in drinking water Mean concentration of lead in treated drinking water, computed over quantified samples only.	µg/l	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-lead-quantified`	Lead quantified sample share Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for lead that returned a numeric result rather than a result below the detection limit.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-lead-exceedance`	Lead limit exceedance rate Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for lead whose result exceeded the regulatory limit of 10 µg/l.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-pesticides-total-concentration`	Total pesticides in drinking water Mean concentration of the sum of the pesticides analysed in treated drinking water, computed over quantified samples only.	µg/l	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-pesticides-total-quantified`	Total pesticides quantified sample share Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for the sum of the pesticides analysed that returned a numeric result rather than a result below the detection limit.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-pesticides-total-exceedance`	Total pesticides limit exceedance rate Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for the sum of the pesticides analysed whose result exceeded the regulatory limit of 0.5 µg/l.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-pfos-concentration`	PFOS in drinking water Mean concentration of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid in treated drinking water, computed over quantified samples only.	µg/l	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-pfos-quantified`	PFOS quantified sample share Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid that returned a numeric result rather than a result below the detection limit.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-arsenic-concentration`	Arsenic in drinking water Mean concentration of arsenic in treated drinking water, computed over quantified samples only.	µg/l	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-arsenic-quantified`	Arsenic quantified sample share Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for arsenic that returned a numeric result rather than a result below the detection limit.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`dw-arsenic-exceedance`	Arsenic limit exceedance rate Percentage of drinking-water samples analysed for arsenic whose result exceeded the regulatory limit of 10 µg/l.	%	supply-zone, local-authority, county
`drinking-water-sample-count`	Drinking water samples analysed Number of regulatory drinking-water sample results held for a supply area over a period.	samples	supply-zone, local-authority, county

Rights and access

Licence position

Open with attribution. Derivative use true; redistribution true; commercial reuse true.

Permitted uses

Public display
Derived analysis
API delivery
Bulk download
Commercial use

Available to: Public, Developer, Research, Professional, Enterprise. These follow from the rights of the contributing publishers, not from a Hydrionis pricing decision — no access tier can widen what a publisher withheld.

Contributing sources

Ministère chargé de la santé / ARS — Qualité de l'eau potable — drinking water (Licence Ouverte / Open Licence v2.0 (Etalab))

Attribution and citation

Cite and reuse →

Two different obligations, deliberately kept apart. One is a condition of somebody else's licence; the other is a request Hydrionis has no standing to enforce.

Attribution you are required to give

These are conditions of the licences the underlying data is published under. They are obligations to the publishers, not to Hydrionis, and they apply to you directly whether or not you mention Hydrionis at all.

Source: Hub’Eau / Système d’information sur l’eau, under Licence Ouverte (Etalab).

Ministère chargé de la santé / ARS — Licence Ouverte / Open Licence v2.0 (Etalab) (licence text)

Suggested citation for Hydrionis

Hydrionis (2026), France Drinking Water Quality Dataset, version 1.0.0, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/data/datasets/france-drinking-water-quality/

Cite Hydrionis where you rely on the compilation, the normalisation, the eligibility judgements or a chart. Where you use an unmodified published value, the publisher’s attribution is the one that is required; crediting Hydrionis as well is welcome and is not something Hydrionis can require of you.

Recommended, not required. Hydrionis does not claim rights over unmodified public data it relayed, and doing arithmetic on somebody else’s measurements does not make them Hydrionis’s. Cite the version and the access date: France Drinking Water Quality Dataset changes as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without both cannot be checked later. Full guidance is on cite and reuse.

Changelog

Version 1.0.0 — 2026-08-25

First release. Hydrionis holds drinking-water observations for the first time.

Additions

Determinand statistics by department for five determinands.

Use this data

Download drinking-water observations from Hub'Eau / SISE-Eaux (5,171 rows) (CSV)
Machine-readable JSON /api/v1/datasets/france-drinking-water-quality.json
How to cite this, and who you must credit
How these figures were produced
Request this at a different scale, format or geography

Every bulk extract ships with a companion metadata file carrying this dataset’s version, its sources, their licences, the attribution you are required to give and the suggested citation — so the terms travel with the file rather than staying on this page.

About this data

The fields a professional user needs to judge whether this is fit for a particular purpose. Deliberately not a score.

About this data

Everything below is a property of the data rather than a rating of it. There is deliberately no single confidence score: how much a gap matters depends on what you are about to do with the series, and only you know that.

Source	Ministère chargé de la santé / ARS — Qualité de l'eau potable — drinking water · Licence Ouverte / Open Licence v2.0 (Etalab)
How the values came to exist	Mixed across the series — the basis is recorded on every individual value.
Period held	2022–2025
Known gaps	A mean computed over quantified results only is biased upward. Where the quantified share is low — as it is for PFOS almost everywhere — the mean describes the detectable minority of samples rather than the water supplied, and must be read with that share. Detection limits improve over time and differ between laboratories, so a rise in the quantified share can reflect better analysis rather than more of the substance. Department-level statistics average over supplies that may differ greatly. A department with one contaminated small supply and a hundred clean ones will not look contaminated.
Continuity	Version 1.0.0, released 2026-08-25. 1 recorded version; breaking changes and corrections are listed in the changelog above.
Last read from the publisher	2026-10-01 · publisher updates annually
Redistribution	Permitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reuse	Permitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
Methodology	How this was produced