Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in India: Vulnerability and Scope for Remedy

Arsenic contamination in groundwater in the Ganga- Brahmaputra fluvial plains in India and Padma-Meghna fluvial plains in Bangladesh and its consequences to the human health have been reported as one of the world’s biggest natural groundwater calamities to the mankind. In India, seven states namely- West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh in the flood plain of the Ganga River; Assam and Manipur in the flood plain of the Brahamaputra and Imphal rivers and Rajnandgaon village in Chhattisgarh state have so far been reported affected by Arsenic contamination in groundwater above the permissible limit of 10 µg/L. People in these affected states have chronically been exposed to drinking Arsenic contaminated hand tube-wells water. With every new survey, more Arsenic affected villages and people suffering from Arsenic related diseases are being reported, and the issues are getting complicated by a number of unknown factors. These fluvial plains represent Holocene aquifers of recent alluvial sediments and have the routes originated from the Himalayan region. Arsenic groundwater contamination has far-reaching consequences including its ingestion through food chain which are in the form of social disorders, health hazards and socio-economic dissolution besides its sprawling with movement