The groundwater in nearly 31 districts in Uttar Pradesh has been found to have a strong arsenic contamination which exposes the people to slow and consistent toxin. A technical report titled Arsenic toxicity in ground water of Uttar Pradesh shows that the concentration of arsenic in groundwater exceeds the Bureau of Indian Standards permissible limits (of 0.01 mg/litre) and this is found in 31 districts of the state. The BIS standards are also in sync with the guidelines laid down by the World Health Organisation regarding arsenic contamination. Testing of water samples from all over UP was done at the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (IITR) in Lucknow. The 20 districts, which figure in the severely toxic zones (above 0.05mg/litre), where arsenic presence has been found to be more than five times of permissible limits include Ballia, Lakhimpur, Bahraich, Ghazipur, Gorakhpur, Bareilly, Siddharthanagar, Basti, Chandauli, Unnao, Moradabad, Sant Kabir Nagar, Sant Ravidas Nagar, Gonda, Bijnore, Mirzapur, Shahjahanpur, Balrampur, Meerut, and Rae Bareli. The three districts which fall in “highly-toxic (arsenic presence from 0.04mg/litre to 0.05mg/litre)” category are Faizabad, Kanpur Nagar and Sitapur. The five districts, which make it to the “dangerously-toxic (from 0.01mg/litre to 0.04mg/ litre)” list, are Ambedkar Nagar, Baghpat, Badaun, Lucknow and Pilibhit. Three districts where arsenic level was found to be around 0.01mg/ litre are Kaushambhi, Saharanpur and Sultanpur. Among the river basins, the Ghaghra basin is most severely arsenic affected region of the state. As far as occurrence of arsenic is concerned, it is believed that rocks with arsenic eroded from the Himalayas, gets deposited as sediments in the alluvial deposits of the Gangetic plain over thousands of years. Mr Rajendra Singh, Magasaysay awardee, known as the “waterman of India”, felt that the problem of arsenic contamination is prevalent in areas where extraction of groundwater has been rampant and where there is no provision for recharge.