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| August 30, 2009 | Polluted Sutlaj river water causing skin disease | | Ropar (Punjab):
Hazardous industrial waste seeping into the Sutlaj River flowing
through Ropar District in Punjab has contaminated the water to the extent that people are getting skin diseases and stomach ailments. Environmentalists blamed cement and thermal factories along the Sutlaj River for polluting the water, apart
from effluents released into the river from factories in Himachal Pradesh . "The
industrial effluents released from a thermal plant near Ghanoli in Ropar is going
into the river and percolating into the ground water. When people draw the water
from a hand pump or a well, it has lot of sulphur and other chemicals," said Jaswant
Singh , an environmentalist in Ropar. People living in about 20 villages mainly
use ground water, which has a high sulphur content. They say the water drawn from
a well or hand pump looks yellow and tastes weird and it is inflicting skin diseases.
"We can't work in this water for long. If you do, you get various skin diseases
and it also upsets the stomach," said Jaswant Singh , a patient. There has been
a sudden increase in the number of people visiting health centres due to various
water-borne diseases. "Contaminated water is the main problem here. We are getting
lot of patients with skin disease, boils, diarrhea and cholera," said Amandeep
Kaur , a pharmacist at a local health centre. The polluted water in the area may
endanger human and wild life, say environmentalists.
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