The presence of fluoride in groundwater of some of the patches of Baleswar district is alarmingly high, observed an expert team.
The team visited two gram panchayats of Patripal in Remuna block and Jayarampur in Bhograi block of the district where there were complaints of high fluoride content in water and reports of many people being affected by fluorosis.
The team members included Rajnarayan Indu and Sunderrajan Krishnan of a Gujarat-based organisation, Fluoride Knowledge and Action Network, which works for safe and sustainable drinking water. Besides dentist Sundar M Senthilnathan of Arghyam, Bangalore was also in the team.
The experts were invited to the district by Baleswar MP RK Jena after raising the issue of fluoride menace in the Parliament.
The team during its visit to these panchayats in Remuna and Bhograi blocks besides collecting drinking water samples also medically examined the school children.
The members met some patients who have become victims of deformity and fluorosis after consuming high level fluoride contained water for a long time.
Rajnarayan Indu of the team said,” The water in Patripal and Jayrampur panchayats contains fluoride content of over 5 mg per litre water against permissible limit of 1 mg per litre.”
“The condition in some of the patients in Patripal is very severe. What is more alarming is that they are taking pain killers and antibiotics. This would affect kidney, heart and other vital organs of the body,” he said.
“Nutrition supplement and consumption of spinach like drumstick leaf and green papaya could bring wonderful result instead of taking antibiotics and painkillers,” said Sunderrajan Krishnan, adding, “In Jhabua district of MP similar fluorosis crisis was mitigated to a large extent within two years of intervention , cutting off the deep tube well water and nutrition supplement.”
The team , however , refused to say the exact cause of presence of fluoride in such high quantity in these patches.
“It is too early to conclude and requires a detail study. The calcium and iron supplement can mitigate the severity,” the team members said.
After visiting Jayrampur, the team conducted medical examinations, mainly the dental, of children in two schools and found many of them were affected with the dental fluorosis. They could be affected with skeleton or non skeleton flurosis, the team said.
In Patripal the team found about 45 patients and some of them were severally crippled, who had lost hope of recovery.
The Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWSS) department, about 7 year ago, had installed a plant in Patripal. It is supplying pipe water after treating the water of Sono river.
RWSS Executive Engineer Rajiv Panigrahi said, “For about seven years, the villagers are being supplied with the treated water of Sono river after the ground water was found unfit for consumption.” The water is provided to a length of about 5 km and 13 tube wells have been marked as unfit, he said.
“The water samples collected from these patches have been sent for testing in Bhubaneswar. Further one more sample would be sent to Ahmadabad to ascertain the fluoride content,” said team coordinator Utkarsha Bharadwaj.
“On the recommendation of team, action would be initiated. The crisis is alarming and if it is not handled carefully, more people will fall victim to fluorosis,” said MP Jena.