Arsenic and fluoride contaminated water has condemned millions of lives in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka

[Emily]

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/slow-poison/article4663315.ece

Slow Poison

Arsenic and fluoride contaminated water has condemned millions to live wasted lives in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Business Line visited several villages in the affected regions for this special report by A. Srinivas.

Sixty-nine-year-old Renubala Ari of Deganga village in West Bengal?s North 24 Parganas district is counting her last days. But it is not her death that worries her.

Blind in both eyes and with painful lesions all over her body ? the effects of arsenic poisoning (or arsenicosis) caused due to drinking contaminated groundwater ? Renubala fears that her children and grandchildren are likely to meet the same fate as her, sooner or later.

If more than a million people in West Bengal suffer from debilitating arsenicosis, in Andhra Pradesh, and the northern and western States in particular, water poisoning takes another form: fluorosis...

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Fluoride Contamination Cripples a Thousand Children in Assam
BY AZERA PARVEEN RAHMAN ON 14/05/2017
Fluoride concentration in groundwater is going up as wells are getting deeper; experts say using surface water after treatment is the only way out.

Over a thousand children below the age of five have been crippled by fluorosis in the last five-six years in Hojai, in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. The most pronounced symptoms are bent legs and crooked teeth.

The culprit? Fluoride-contaminated water. According to an official survey, fluoride levels in water above the permissible limit of 1 mg/litre has been found in 11 districts in the state ? putting an estimated 356,000 people at risk. Experts warn that the numbers will rise if appropriate steps are not taken on an emergency basis.
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https://thewire.in/135354/fluoride-contamination-cripples-thousand-children-assam/