Ashok Kumar Ghosh addresses students at Sri Krishna Science Centre in Patna. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, March 31: People from adjacent villages did not want to take their brides home from Ojhapatti village of Bhojpur district. The reason: the girls from the village were infected with severe skin allergies (ulcers on hands and legs) which other villagers feared would spread to their areas too.

Skin ailments and several other diseases affected villagers in Ojhapatti because they were drinking water with high arsenic content, said Ashok Kumar Ghosh, professor, department of environment and water resources, AN College.

Ghosh, who was sharing his research study on “water quality and quantity in Bihar” with school students at Sri Krishna Science Centre today, said, in 2002, during his research, he recorded high presence of arsenic in water in 57 blocks and 16 districts of Bihar.

According to him, the Ganga Meghna Brahmaputra Plain (GMP), which is sprawled in 569749sqkm, covering areas of U.P, Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Bangladesh with around 500 million population, is facing the risk of arsenic poisoning because of water contamination in the region.

A WHO report said the presence of arsenic in the water in the region was 1861 PPB (part per billion) against the permissible limit of 10 PPB, the professor informed.

Vaishali, Patna, Naugachia, Supaul, Saharsa, Bhagalpur, Madhubani and Samastipur exposed to most dangerous form of arsenic — trivalent arsenic, he added.

“It’s presence in tubewell water is 980 PPB and it has already reached crops like maize, rice, tomato which makes it a reason for reaching to the food pipe of people,” Ghosh warned.