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Another scourge

  • 14/09/2004

The prolonged intake of water containing excess fluoride causes the crippling disease called fluorosis. The first case of endemic fluorosis in India was reported from Andhra Pradesh in 1937. By 1999, the disease was known to be endemic in 17 states, and an estimated 66 million people affected in both rural and urban areas. As per the Economic Survey of Delhi, 2003-2004, fluoride content of groundwater in the city is as high as 19.33 milligrammes per litre (mg/l). The maximum permissible limit is 1.5 mg/l.

Public policy refuses to accept that the problem is not fluoride per se. The problem is groundwater usage. The answer, therefore, lies not only in the management of the elements like fluoride and arsenic, but in the management of groundwater.

The fact is that we are becoming more and more dependent on the withdrawals from aquifers for our drinking needs. There is no regulation worth its name for the management of this resource. Every attempt to legislate against overuse remains in a draft form. At the same time, technological advancement is helping us reach deeper and deeper into the Earth to search for water. What we desperately need is strategies to ensure that the abstraction of water does not exceed the recharge of the aquifers. We need effective programmes to invest in harvesting of the rainwater to rebuild the groundwater reserves.

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