Arsenic Poisoning Sparks Health Crisis in Indian State

Surajit Talukdar
Source: OneWorld South Asia
18 June 2004

KARIMGANJ (Assam), June 18 (OneWorld) - Amid governmental apathy, arsenic poisoning remains a slow killer in the Karimganj district of India's northeastern state of Assam bordering Bangladesh, where some 236,302 impoverished villagers are afflicted by serious skin and kidney ailments.

One of India's leading arsenic researchers Dr Dipankar Chakraborty, has drawn attention to the impending health disaster here, through letters to the Indian President, government of Assam, Unicef, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank.

The amount of arsenic detected in groundwater samples in Karimganj is ten times higher than the all India limit of 0.05 milligrams per liter (mg/l). WHO's permissible limit of arsenic in drinking water is 0.01 mg/l.

Remarks Chakraborty, who is the director of the School of Environmental Studies (SOES) in Jadavpur University in the eastern city of Kolkata, " A large part of Assam is in the Brahmaputra plain so we expect groundwater contamination like Bangladesh."

A report titled "Preliminary report on groundwater contamination in Assam: the latest findings in the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra plain," recently released by the SOES reveals that 19.1 per cent of the water tested from 241 tubewells in the region had more than 50 mg/l of arsenic, while 42.3 per cent had more than 10 mg/l .

Warns M.M Rahman, arsenic researcher at Jadavpur University, "The situation is grave as 2.1 per cent of the samples tested showed beyond 300 mg/l of arsenic in drinking water."

The problem is aggravated by the fact that population density in Karimganj is one of the highest in India.

With a total population of 827,063 (as per the 1991 census) and a total land area of 1809 square kilometer, the density stands at 457 persons per square kilometer.

Scientists point out that there is a strange connection between poverty and arsenocosis. Almost 90 per cent of the people living in the border areas of Karimganj are very poor and malnourished, which makes them more susceptible to the poisioning due to their low immunity levels.

Says skin specialist Dr N.Chakraborty, "Out of 20-50 children I get daily from many villages in southern and northern Karimganj, at least 25 suffer from hair, nail and skin problems."

The first visible symptoms of arsenic poisoning are dark spots on the skin known as skin lesions or melanosis, dark and light spots or leuco-melanosis, followed by the localized thickening of skin and formation of warts like painful growths or keratosis, ulcer, gangrene and skin cancer.

Over a long period of time, drinking arsenic contaminated water also causes skin, lung, liver, kidney and bladder cancer.

Take the case of Abdul Hamid, 40 of Sadarashi village who died of kidney cancer last month. Dr Abdus Sukkur Khanth, the homeopath who treated him in the early stages suspects he died of prolonged exposure to arsenic. One of his earliest symptoms was skin pigmentation on his palm.

The lack of public awareness about arsenocosis here also heightens the risk.
As Khan puts it, "The danger is that most of those drinking this arsenic-contaminated water are not even aware of it or its consequences."

A typical case is that of Anulal Das and his family of three, residents of Kayasthagram village in northern Karimganj, all of whom are pockmarked with "raindrop pigmentation" (development of sporadic black and white color patches on the back and chest).

Shudders a fearful Das, "We have been drinking this tubewell water since the past five years. Only now we discovered that the water here has the highest concentration of arsenic in Assam -- 444 mg/l."

But like other residents here, he has no choice. For as he shrugs, "We don't know what to do now as there are no alternative sources of drinking water in our locality."

Most residents of this underdeveloped region are totally dependent on drinking water drawn from tubewells.

More than 80 per cent of the 236,302 people living in the affected 70 villages in south and north Karimganj use tube well water. At least ten villages here are vulnerable to mass poisoning.

Admits Assam Public Health Engineering (PHE) minister D.P Goala, "Given the present situation, we are anticipating the problem to surface on a large scale."

In a recent report, the World Bank mentioned that in neighboring Bangladesh, 43,000 out of 68,000 villages could be at risk of arsenic poisoning. Likewise, a WHO report predicts that within a few years, one in ten adults in Bangladesh could die of cancers caused by arsenic.

Says an alarmed PHE executive engineer, Gautam Pal says, "We are taking the arsenic problem seriously as Karimganj is geologically a part of the Sylhet plain of Bangladesh."

But the villagers have little faith in the PHE, which they accuse of digging tubewells below 150 feet - a level where there is greater arsenic contamination.

Villagers here are preparing to file a public interest litigation against the Karimganj PHE in Assam's Guwahati High Court, for failing to take adequate measures to save them from mass poisoning.