WUNRN
Via WOMEN'S FEATURE SERVICE
India - New Delhi
India:
Water Purifiers: How Women Fight Arsenic Contamination
By Ajitha Menon
Nadia (Women's Feature Service) - Sahidun Bewa, 30, toils hard, making one
arsenic filter after another with fine-tuned precision at Bara Andulia village
in Nadia district, West Bengal. She earns Rs 100 (US$1=Rs50) per filter.
Sahidun is not driven by the money but by the acute awareness that each filter
can save up to five lives, on an average. Arsenic acts as slow poison. Over
six-and-a-half million people are drinking arsenic-contaminated water every day
in this eastern state of India.
"This district has been declared arsenic-prone. The only way to avoid
contamination is to use these alumina-activated arsenic filters. We keep
motivating women in our villages to use the filters for safe drinking and
cooking water to prevent onset of diseases caused by arsenic poisoning,"
says Sahidun.
Nadia is one of the nine severely arsenic-contaminated districts in West
Bengal. The ground water in all the 17 blocks of the district shows
concentrations of arsenic above 0.01 mg/l, the World Health Organization (WHO)
guideline permissible value. A survey (A 12-year study conducted in 767 of the
1,250 villages of Nadia, compiled up to September 2006) by the School of
Environment Studies, Jadavpur University, found that about 51.2 per cent of the
tube wells here had arsenic concentrations of over 0.01 mg/l, while 17.2 per
cent had levels above 0.05 mg/l (Indian Standard Value). About 1.8 per cent had
contamination above 0.3 mg/l. At least 117 villages (out of 1,250 villages) had
arsenic contamination above 0.3 mg/l. A total of 649 villages had contamination
above 0.01mg/l while 441 villages had contamination above 0.05mg/l
Dr Dipankar Chakraborty, Director, School of Environmental Studies, Jadavpur
University, says, "My studies have found that 95 per cent of children
below 11 years of age, living in arsenic affected villages, show hair and nail
arsenic above normal level. Infants and children might be at greater risk from
arsenic toxicity because of more water consumption on body weight basis."
"Earlier, villagers were told to boil water before drinking to prevent
diseases. Arsenic actually increases if the water is boiled as with evaporation
the water volume goes down while the arsenic concentration remains the same. We
are trying to change old habits. Measures against arsenic contamination started
only around 2003," explains Bharati Biswas, Secretary, Bara Andulia Mahila
Samity, which runs the arsenic filter-making unit in collaboration with UNICEF.
Years of drinking arsenic contaminated water causes various diseases starting
from skin lesions, which leads to skin cancer; Bowen's disease; and cancer of
the lungs, liver, colon and bladder. These symptoms take years to surface.
Unfortunately, there are few takers for the arsenic filters being manufactured
across 13 units in the district. "We are extremely poor. We cannot ensure
even one square meal a day for ourselves. How can we afford Rs 500 for an
arsenic filter?" Rekha Patra, 45, of Jeetpur Para village flatly asks.
Both Rekha and her husband Subhash, 50, like many others in their village, have
symptoms of arsenic poisoning, such as hardened skin and Blackfoot disease.
In West Bengal, in addition to Nadia, the districts of Malda, Murshidabad,
North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Bardhaman, Howrah, Hooghly and Kolkata
are severely affected, with a contamination level of over 0.3 mg/l.
Five other districts - Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, North Dinajpur and
South Dinajpur - are mildly affected, with contamination above 0.05 mg/l. Only
five of the State's 19 districts are arsenic-safe.
"NGOs and government programme coordinators are dependent on women
motivators to create awareness against arsenic poisoning," says Jasmine
Begum, 35, an office-bearer with the Samity. The government has also made
provisions for tap water in certain areas but the reach is insignificant.
When the enormity of the contamination became evident, NGOs and organisations
like the UNICEF set up arsenic-testing labs in the affected districts. Now the
labs have been taken over by the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department of
the state government. Nadia has five such labs. "We visit villages and
collect samples from local tube wells. For every sample, the lab pays us Rs 25.
If the test comes out arsenic positive, we return to the same villages and
motivate the villagers to buy the Activated Alumina Arsenic Filters. We earn a
commission of Rs 20 for every filter we manage to sell," explains
motivator Farida Biwi, 35, of Chapra village.
Sagari Bewa, 36, motivator of Bara Andulia village, says, "Though testing
has not been done to the fullest extent, we know that if vegetables and fruits
are cultivated using arsenic-contaminated water, they too have arsenic
concentration. We have even found arsenic in cow's milk after the cow has fed on
grass in arsenic contaminated areas. Preventive measures and awareness
campaigns are therefore required on a war footing."
One of the major problems, as seen in Chapra Block of Nadia district, was the
constant breakdown of the deep tube wells identified as arsenic-free. "We
had to wait for a mechanic for weeks, who would then charge exorbitantly. I
decided to join the training camp for women mechanics in Shantipur, conducted
by the Zilla Parishad in collaboration with the PHE department," recalls
Zulekha Bibi, 36, from Bara Andulia village. Some 300 trained women mechanics
now repair their own as well as government tube wells in villages across Nadia
district to ensure that the safe tube wells keep functioning.
Despite the awareness campaigns many still fail to adopt better practices, due
to poverty. "Experts from the School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata, came
and told us that in some places here, there are arsenic concentrations of even
up to 3.2 mg/l. We are aware that we are drinking poison, but what is the
alternative? We are too poor to buy the filters, too poor to replace the
regenerated activated alumina candles for Rs 15 each regularly. We were told to
improve our diet, eat fish, meat and vegetables - but how? Where is the
money? In fact, we are too poor for anyone to actually care," says Jayanti
Biswas, 29, of Tabu para village, whose three-and-half-year-old son was born
with a club foot and who reveals that her father-in-law "died of cancer
caused by arsenic poisoning".
The government actually had done something for the people of Tabu para. The PHE
department had set up an activated alumina tube well here. The people did use
the water from it but when the activated alumina needed replacement, they could
not come up with the required money - around Rs 1,000 to cover the cost of
cleaning and replacement or approximately Rs 1.5 lakh for a new activated
alumina tubewells. The tube well is still being used, but it is no longer
arsenic-free.
"People do not find the money for filters or to regenerate the government
arsenic free tube wells, but when they have to go to the doctor, they are
forced to arrange for the money. The challenge lies in making them aware that
even though arsenic poisoning shows symptoms only after 15 to 25 years, it can
be fatal. There is also the danger of the future generations suffering even
more as groundwater contamination keeps increasing, year after year, because of
over-extraction of water," says Shakila Bibi, a motivator with the Bara
Andulia Mahila Samity.
It is ironic indeed when water, which is meant to be life-giving, ends up
causing death.
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