Safe potable water is a luxury in Nuapada district where content of fluoride and residues of agrochemicals in the water is very high.

Despite several schemes with outlay running into crores of rupees have been lined up to mitigate water scarcity in the State, residents of Boden and Komna blocks of the district have to walk miles together in search of clean drinking water every summer.

Excess fluoride content in drinking water leads to physical deformities, the most common being skeletal fluorosis. The State Government has asked the district administration to sensitise the public to go for deep tube wells to avoid fluoride content.

In the tribal dominated villages of Nuamalpada, Khandapada and Bortipada under Sinapali block, high fluoride content has turned water into slow poison. While the permissible limit of fluoride in water is 0.5 to 1 mg per litre, as per official records, the groundwater in Boden has 1.5 mg fluoride content per litre.

In Palsipani and Dhamabhata villages under Komna block and Karlapat and Sukhalpur of Boden block, the fluoride content is much higher.

In Dhamabhata, even tube well water has fluoride content of 5.4 mg per litre. It has posed a serious threat to human lives in more than 100 villages of the district. Sources said of 6,282 tube wells in the district, 2,000 pump out fluoride laced water.

It has been found by the National Cancer Institute’s toxicological programme that fluoride can cause cancer.  Drinking such water makes bones brittle and also increases infertility in women.

Besides, it causes premature aging, brown teeth, wrinkled skin, joint pain, premature hardening of the arteries and loss of appetite. The rate of stillborn and miscarriages by the fourth month is also one of its effects.

Though the Government has launched a long term piped purified drinking water project, it is unlikely to be completed before the summer.

When contacted, Executive Engineer of Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Binod Sethi said Government had allotted ` 250 crore to combat the problem in the last fiscal year by providing piped purified drinking water.

Once the project is completed, the problem would be mitigated to a large extent.

Fluorosis Effect

While the permissible limit of fluoride in water is 0.5 to 1 mg per litre, as per official records, the groundwater in Boden has 1.5 mg fluoride content per litre and Dhamabhatait has 5.4 mg per litr

Fluoride laced water can cause cancer, makes bones brittle, increases infertility in women, causes premature aging, premature hardening of the arteries and loss of appetite

Though the Government has launched a long term piped purified drinking water project, it is unlikely to be completed before the summer.