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| Down to Earth |
🔅Affected Regions
▪️ Ganga- Brahmaputra fluvial plains in India
▪️ Padma-Meghna fluvial plains in Bangladesh
▪️ Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal
▪️ Assam and Manipur in the flood plains of the Brahamaputra and Imphal rivers and Rajnandgaon village in Chhattisgarh.
🔅What is arsenic?
▪️Arsenic (As) is an odourless and tasteless metalloid widely distributed in the earth’s crust.
▪️It usually occurs in trace quantities in all rocks, soil, water and air.
🔅Sources
▪️Natural- Leaching of ambient arsenic in groundwater from sediments.
▪️Anthropogenic- Agrochemicals, wood preservatives, industrial sources etc
▪️ Drinking water as well as eating food that has been contaminated with arsenic.
▪️When agricultural fields are irrigated with arsenic contaminated groundwater, inorganic forms of arsenic get absorbed by the plants and hence arsenic enters the food cycle.
🔅Accepted Limit
▪️The maximum contaminant level (MCL) for arsenic in drinking water is 10 ppb (according to WHO) followed by most of the developed countries.
▪️In developing countries including India and Bangladesh, 50 ppb is considered as the accepted level for arsenic in drinking water.
What is Arsenicosis?
▪️Arsenicosis is the medical word for arsenic poisoning, which occurs due to accumulation of large amounts of arsenic in the body.
📌NOTE
🍥 India, the world’s largest groundwater consumer, uses around 230 cubic kilometers of groundwater in a year.
🍥 Of the total available groundwater (253 billion cubic metres), around 90 per cent (228.3 BCM) is used in agricultural irrigation.
🍥 As per UNICEF's State of the World's Children Report 2019, the Under 5 Mortality Rate in India is 37 per 1,000 live births against Global average of 39 per 1,000 live births in 2018, which translates to more than 8 lakhs under 5 deaths in India.
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