The Centre will prepare an exhaustive plan to meet the challenges of arsenic contamination in groundwater in the Ganga-Brahmaputra fluvial plains.
This has severely affected many districts of UP, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam and Manipur.
There is an urgent need to start a nationwide movement to make people aware of arsenic contamination and urged individual and NGOs to join the government in this task.
Arsenic in groundwater is caused by natural geological processes. Long-term exposure to arsenic in drinking water can cause skin cancer and other diseases.
Though numerous measures, including alternate arrangement for supply of arsenic-free water and planting arsenic removal plants, have been taken in the last three decades, the entire population of the affected districts could not be covered.
Another aim is tapping alternate safe aquifers (water bearing permeable rock) for supply of arsenic-free groundwater.
Water wells have also been constructed tapping arsenic-free aquifers using state-of-the-art technology in parts of Ballia and Ghazipur districts of UP.
