Even as industry representatives and the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board go into denial mode about the scale and effects of pollution at Patancheru, researchers are pointing towards illnesses that have plagued the region for decades. Though supply of protected water has reduced incidence of diseases, the area is still victim to contaminated soil and air which also pose serious health hazards.
The recent Swedish research report that pointed at excessive traces of antibiotics in streams here could have medical researchers making a beeline here. Earlier too, the industrial area that hosts hundreds of manufacturing plants of paint, plastic, chemical and bulk drugs has regularly manifested several ‘mysterious’ diseases, a fact acknowledged way back in 1990 by the then Union minister of state for planning Bhage Govardhan. Locals who suspected that water in the area was responsible for their illnesses found ample support in various medical surveys conducted by individuals and organisations.
Local doctor A Kishan Rao who has practised here for decades and done research on medical ailments says, “Perhaps not many studies have been conducted on the effects of prolonged consumption of Ciprofloxacin in this form. Known contaminants have caused enough problems already.” He should know, considering that he wrote a book detailing the problems people here face as a result of longterm exposure to drugs and water contamination.
Greenpeace too had conducted a survey in 2004 with a sample population of 9,000 drawn from 9 villages some 100 km away from Patancheru. The survey found that the controlled samples here revealed higher incidence of several diseases when compared to people elsewhere. Rate of incidence of cancer was found to be 3 times more, hypertension was 2.5 times more, epilepsy and other neurological disorders was 3 times more than elsewhere. Besides, lymphatic disorders, skin diseases and several other disorders were uncommonly high, say sources in Greenpeace.
Kishan Rao recalls, “I found some very strange cases here, like a baby that was born without eyeballs. Her mother, a washer woman, used to wash and bathe at the stream and even consume that water, even when she was pregnant. After the baby was born, I suspected that this could be some sort of genetic mutation due to contamination. So three years later, when the woman came to me with a second pregnancy, we took all precautions and asked her to avoid using that stream during the pregnancy. Thereafter, her second child was born healthy. There may be no scientific proof for this, but I strongly suspect it is due to pollution.” This was around nine years back, before protected drinking water began to be supplied to villages in the area. Incidence of such diseases have reduced since then.
Yet even now people are still exposed to contamination through various other sources that affect their food cycle, say analysts. Contaminated water from streams enters their food cycle through the soil and the plants that grow here, as well as through the air they breathe in. All these could lead to serious health disorders. Cases of sudden heart attacks are on the rise here, warns Kishan Rao adding “There are now two to three deaths in month due to sudden heart attacks; a 40 year old healthy individual died suddenly in his sleep, and another middle-aged villager simply collapsed in a bus stop and died right there. Somebody should study why this higher here.”
Studies have also found an abnormally high incidence of 11 metals like zinc, arsenic and even pesticides in mother’s milk here.
Experts might say that some drugs like ciproflaxin do not have long-term effects even when dumped because it gets disintegrated within a few days, but with fresh dumping happening all the time, there is really no letup. Patancheru can return to normalcy only after the cycle of dumping stops.
Independent lab to test Patancheru water
The Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board on Friday decided to have the samples of the treated wastewater released into Iska Vagu and Nakka Vagu rivulets in Patancheru tested at an independent laboratory to find out whether they contained traces of drugs that a European scientist has found during her research.
The study conducted by Joakim Larsson, an environmental scientist at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, revealed that the wastewater being let out into streams from Patancheru Effluent Treatment Plant (PETP) carried pharmaceutical concentrations which when consumed pose serious health hazards.
“We have collected samples on Thursday and Friday and they are being sent to a third party for testing. The Gothenburg University study mentioned names of 11 drugs found in the samples. We will check out on all of them,” a scientist at PCB Ramani told HNN.
According to sources, though the PCB is under pressure to test the samples for different parameters than it had been working with, it would take quite some time to carry out a comprehensive study. “There are 86 bulk drug manufacturing units that send their treated effluents to the PETP. There are also 18 villages that are located on the Nakka Vagu route before the water enters Manjira River. To collect samples from all these places and have them tested would take up to 10 days. If they rush with the job the results would not help in correcting the situation which is alarming,” the sources said.
Following the publication of Joakim Larsson research results in TOI, the PCB is facing flak from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest whose additional secretary Rajan Khaja would be visiting Hyderabad on Saturday. A team of experts from the Central Pollution Control Board will be separately inspecting the PETP and discussing the report prepared by the PCB.
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