Living with disability: High fluoride in water takes its toll on villages in Rajasthan

Two cousins, one 18 and the other six, struggling with deformed limbs and stunted growth, and several others, including toddlers and elders, in the joint family coping with frequent joint pains – knowing the water they drink could be the reason but doing so anyway because there are no options.
 
That’s the story of not just Singh family but others as well in the villages of Devpura and Moondwara in Rajasthan's Sambhar block, about 80 km from the Sambhar salt lake, India's largest inland salt lake. The villagers, many of them unlettered, blame the lake water that has contaminated the groundwater as the main reason for high salinity and fluoride content in drinking water. According to Om Prakash Sharma, head of the NGO Gram Chetna Kendra that works in the area, disability in the two villages about 50 km from Jaipur averages about 10 in 1,000. The national number is 5 in 1,000 people. That is almost double the normal average, he pointed out. The disability is directly linked to high fluoride content in the area, a fact backed by studies, he said. Long term effects of skeletal fluorosis takes place if the fluoride level in water is more than 1 mg/litre, said Dr Aman Dua, director, joint replacement and orthopaedics, at Delhi’s Fortis Escorts hospital.
 
“So there is widening of bones, deformities in joints and the symptoms are specially marked in the spinal column where they may lead to nerve compression and weakening of limbs because of long term use,” he told PTI.